Rose Petals in the Snow
by DeltaNovember
Summary: Beacon never existed and hunters are accepted to the guild as soon as they pass the exam. Ruby, the youngest admitted hunter at only fifteen, goes on a journey amidst the ever-increasing threat of Grimm and growing tensions within the walled city of Vale.
1. Wanderer

_Rose Pedals in the Snow_

 **Wanderer**

"Ouch!"

The little girl fell into the snow from the impact of Ruby's snowball.

"No fair Miss Ruby, you're too fast."

"Oh?" Ruby smiled and put her hands on her hips. "I suppose I could go easy on you, if you _really_ want me to."

The girl pouted and turned her head. The rest of the children wandered over now that Ruby was the last man standing. The boys praised her for being "super cool and strong," which managed to drag a blush out of her. She had (sort of) won fair and square, though whether or not a semblance of speed was cheating was probably something worthy of debate.

"I demand a rematch," said one of the boys.

"Fine," replied one of the others. "But only if we play teams, and Miss Ruby gets to be on _our_ team!"

"What? No way."

Ruby tried to calm them down, but to no avail whatsoever. She was barely more than a kid herself, after all. All the village children were having a snowball fight. Apparently to put Ruby to the test.

"Only if Matt gets to play too."

"No way he's joining, how about—"

The static from Ruby's two-way radio interrupted whatever that next thought was going to be. It was a cheap, old model, but the village couldn't really afford any of the nicer technology. Ruby's mobile wouldn't be so useful. Plus the signal was atrocious this time of the year anyways.

" _Hun—...northeast, about—...—minutes—"_

Ruby pushed the button on the radio. "Can you say that again please?"

" _Hunter, there's a wolf approaching from the northeast. Five minutes."_

"Hokay. On my way."

The kids looked up at Ruby, the expression on their faces more somber than they were just seconds ago. They had overheard the conversation which meant that Ruby couldn't play with them anymore. It also meant there was a substantial amount of danger in the area, but Ruby didn't know if the children really comprehended that level of detail.

"Sorry kids, duty calls."

"Can you play with us after?"

Ruby nodded and punched the air. "Of course I can."

She made her way north just as the adults started rushing towards to grab their children and get them safe. The village was small and didn't have much in ways of defenses, so they had to be really careful. There were dangerous things in the woods and the safety of the city was a long ways off.

At the north gate of the village Ruby found a couple of men holding spears and one holding binoculars. When he saw Ruby approach he handed them to her and she took a look to where he was pointing. Approaching cautiously was a Grimm. Similar in shape to a wolf, but it had no fur. Just black skin made of shadow.

Ruby drew her weapon and planted it into the ground, extending the barrel, flipping up the scope and loading in one of her special cartridges. The wolf approached steadily, but it was far off enough for Ruby to be able to aim. She lined the wolf up in her sights, made several adjustments, then drifted the rifle a good deal above and to the right of where the wolf actually was.

Sniping was always hard during the winter. The weather ruined everything.

— _Bang._

A single shot rang out. A second passed before the screams of a dying Grimm echoed throughout the forest. Ruby looked up from her scope, and used the binoculars again. That seemed to be the only one.

"Is that it? Is it over?" Asked one of the men. Ruby shrugged.

"They travel in packs, so there's more in the area. If we're super lucky they'll take the loss of their friend as a sign to retreat."

"And if we're not so lucky?"

"Then they'll just get angry." Ruby handed the binoculars back to the man. "You should double up your watches for the next few days, if you can."

Ruby redid the scarf around her neck and pulled up her hood. It was getting colder and the snow started to fall again. It was just a light snowfall for now, but the clouds were dark and dismal. Ruby had seen these sorts of formations enough times before to know that it could easily turn into a blizzard.

The villagers themselves knew it too, probably far better than Ruby did. One of the guardsmen tried to catch Ruby's attention. She was spacing out looking up at the clouds. Winter was one of her more favorite seasons after all.

"Uh, Miss Hunter?"

"Hmm?" Ruby looked down. "Oh, I'm sorry, gah. What did you say?"

The man chuckled. "If you'd like, you're welcome to stay in my home tonight. I'll probably be on watch but the wife'll love to have ya. You shouldn't sleep out in that tent in weather like this."

Ruby waved her hand back and fourth. "It's really not a bother, I shouldn't impose."

"Nonsense, I really insist."

"Right Jim," said one of the others. "And then the hunter will just _happen_ to be around your wife in case anything bad happens."

"H-Hey, I never—"

"Now now," Ruby said. "I guess it can't hurt. Thank you for your hospitality."

The man named Jim puffed up his chest. "See? I'm a gentleman."

" _Right._ "

Jim's wife was a lovely lady. She made Ruby a nice hot bowl of chicken soup, which wasn't particularly fancy in any way but was delicious all the same. Ruby had soup all the time but it was always out of a can. Such was the life of being on the road. When the ingredients were fresh though it was like eating something else entirely.

They didn't have an extra bed but Ruby was content sleeping on the couch. Considering her other option tonight was a sleeping bag in a tent. Plus when the blizzard started Ruby knew she made the right choice.

Not that she would really get all that much sleep. She wanted to do her part, and did patrols with the other guards looking out for Grimm. The type that had approached the village tended to hunt at night so it was most likely they would attack now if they would attack at all. Though Ruby wasn't sure if they would be willing to take advantage of the blizzard, or if they would rather take shelter from it.

"Bad news," someone shouted. Ruby turned around to see a frantic look on the face of one of the guards. "One of the children has gone missing."

"Do you _—_ "

"We found tracks leading into the northern forest, but we lost the trail. We're organizing a search."

Ruby nodded and the guard led her to where everyone was gathered. It was decided to employ a sort of informal grid search where everyone would spread out and search a specific area. They would also try to stay in each other's line of sight but unfortunately the area was a bit too large to adhere to that.

Though Ruby had no problem searching on ahead. She rarely had the advantage of backup anyways.

"Hmm."

Tracking Grimm was similar to tracking animals, but there were some key differences. The guild mostly taught on following their "aura trails" with specialized equipment, but Ruby couldn't really afford said equipment. There were other more subtle ways to track them though. Grimm didn't hunt like regular animals and their paths were directly influenced by human movements.

It was still over an hour before Ruby found the boy.

She hid between the trees and stared at him as he sat in the middle of a small clearing crying. Three wolf Grimm surrounded him silently pacing back and fourth. The boy's cry didn't carry very far and was really more of a sobbing.

Ruby laid down her rifle in the snow and took aim, but didn't fire. Instead she just looked through the scope, adjusting it for night vision.

"C'mon..." Ruby whispered to herself. "Just leave him. He's plenty, there's only three of you..."

The wolves didn't move against the boy as the minutes passed. Ruby kept her scope on them ready to pull the trigger the instant she had to. But conditions were far from ideal and if she accidentally shot the kid _—_

Ruby shook her head back and fourth. "Nonono, don't think about that Ruby."

She adjusted her scope and continued to watch the Grimm feed. They weren't like normal predators, they hunted on emotion. The boy crying was their feast and the only trouble would be after. Would they leave him alone or finish him off?

"Crud."

A shot echoed through the forest and pummeled one of the wolf Grimm. Ruby had seen them change their stance and get ready to kill the boy. At their fallen comrade the other two fled into the forest as Ruby jumped out from her perch. She grabbed the boy and made sure he was safe.

Her shot brought everyone running toward her. They were relieved and one of the stronger men carried the boy back to the town in his arms. His mom came running out and hugged him.

"Thank you so much," she cried. Ruby's face went a little red.

"D-Don't mention it."

The guards and her extended the patrol a little bit and made sure that everyone in the village was safe and accounted for, but it seems that would be the only incident for tonight. After her shift Ruby decided to take up that man on his offer and go stay in his wife's house for the night.

She fell asleep within minutes of laying down.

"Good morning, Miss Hunter."

Ruby pulled herself up off the couch, rubbing her eyes. Someone was dragging open the drapes, letting an obnoxious beam of sunlight into the room to spill right onto Ruby's face.

"Would you like some oatmeal for breakfast?"

"Mhhmmm." Ruby stared at the couch, trying to regain control of her faculties. "Do you have, uh. Coffee. Yes. That?"

"Sure thing."

The nice, motherly woman brought Ruby a cup of coffee. Ruby cradled it in her hands, sipping it slowly and letting the warmth flush over her. Even though the sun seemed to be out it was still just as cold as it was last night. Or at least that's how it felt to Ruby, though she did just wake up.

"Thank you," Ruby said after she had woken up a bit more properly and gobbled down a bowl of oatmeal. It wasn't a five-star meal but Ruby thought it was delicious anyways. "And thanks for letting me sleep here."

The woman smiled. "Oh, it's really no trouble. Especially after your help finding little Greg last night."

Ruby gathered her things and put on her outfit before bidding the woman farewell. The kids were being taught in the schoolhouse which meant that Ruby could talk to the adults alone. That was good, it would be bad for the kids to be present.

The guard presence wasn't half what it was the previous night. Ruby went to go find the man in charge.

"There will be a large-scale attack soon," she said. The guard captain looked mortified, as did all the others. "No no no, try to keep your spirits up," Ruby said quickly.

"B-But you just said—"

"Grimm are attracted to negative emotions. Hence their name I imagine. It's best to stay in high spirits even when there's no reason to be." Ruby smiled. "Fake it if you have to, it works almost as good."

"Is that why we're being targeted? The village is too unhappy?" The man scratched his arm. "We don't _seem_ all that unhappy, no more than anyone else. Well, as happy as one could possibly be this side of the wall."

Ruby sat down on one of the nearby benches. "It's not your fault, not really. The Grimm have been unusually active in the past year. Events that usually wouldn't attract them are now causing a whole bunch to appear." She tightened her scarf, and pulled it up a bit to cover her mouth from the cold breeze. "It's too late to do anything now though, you're already in the sights of the wolf pack. So we're gunna have to kill 'em."

She decided not to mention letting the boy die would have likely prevented the attack.

"What do we do?"

Ruby smiled and brought her fist up to her chest. "That's what I'm here for."

Hunters were rather widely known for their prowess in defeating Grimm, though that wasn't a preventative measure by any means. Similar to the police their job was often _reactive._ They only showed up after the problem had escalated. As far as anyone could tell actually _preventing_ Grimm attacks was as easy as keeping everyone happy and well-fed.

So although Ruby was great at killing Grimm, she couldn't even imagine how to keep a village's spirits up.

She helped the village fortify their defenses though there wasn't much they could do. They moved people around to different houses, leaving some vacant so they could reduce the area they needed to defend. The village wall was pitiful and wouldn't serve any real purpose so Ruby had no choice but to position herself around the center.

Grimm were smart. She could expect an attack from both sides. That was generally how these types fought.

It wasn't that night, but the one after when the pack struck. The night was clear, the broken moon casting its glow over the snow. Ruby positioned herself on a roof with her rifle steady in her hands.

" _I see them coming from the Northwest,"_ said a voice through the radio. Ruby twisted in that direction and tried to locate them. Even though the moon was out the forest still obscured the light. Add on top of that the Grimm's natural colors and it was near-impossible to spot them until they were already on top of the village.

— _Bang._

Ruby fired a shot, then two more.

" _There's more coming from the south!"_

Ruby grabbed the radio. "You guys take care of them, I'll handle the ones on the north side."

" _Roger."_

She jumped off the building, the wolves a bit too close to snipe now. They were already over the wall. Ruby expanded her rifle into its alternate form, the blade folding out in slides to form a massive scythe as large as Ruby herself. She headed them off in the streets between two vacated homes.

There were seven. Three of them flanked her on the right, four on the left. For a brief moment no one made a move before two of the wolves suddenly leaped at Ruby from opposite directions, fangs bared ready to sink them into her soft flesh.

Ruby pulled the pump on the pole of the scythe, firing a cartridge at the wolf on the left. The recoil flung the scythe to the right, and Ruby used the momentum to strike at the other Grimm. It was a move she had practiced plenty before and the basic idea was fundamental to her fighting style.

Speed.

She hopped to the right following the arc of her weapon. It wasn't about hitting hard, it was about being fast. But that lack of strength meant sometimes Ruby had to follow the direction her weapon was already going, rather than where she wanted it to go.

— _Bang—_

Unless she changed that momentum drastically. A bullet slammed into the same wolf she had just sliced, splattering it against the wall of the nearest house and sending herself back to the other flank of wolves.

She repeated this tactic until the wolves figured out the pattern to what she was doing, but by that time there were only two of them left. Despite them learning the trick and taking measures against it, it was too late. Ruby fought with speed. Her opponents didn't have time to plan against her.

Another wolf had its body sliced in half and dragged through the snow by Ruby's scythe when the last one decided it would run away. In a single motion Ruby rammed her scythe into the ground and pumped the trigger. Three shots and the deserter was down.

But the battle wasn't over yet. Ruby made sure there weren't any other threats nearby and then headed to the other side of the town where the other wolves had attacked. It wasn't more than a mile, but with Ruby's speed she could make it in under two minutes.

She found a graveyard of Grimm corpses, only two still alive surrounded by several spear-wielding guardsmen.

Ruby changed her scythe back into a rifle, and decided to take a position as backup. The guards managed to kill one of the other wolves, and the attack gave Ruby an opening to fire into the other one from a distance.

"Woo, hell yeah," exclaimed one of the men. There was a round of cheering before Ruby clapped her hands too. They probably hadn't even needed her, and there was a tinge of regret of her having wasted the Dust to use her weapon.

Then again, it was always cause to celebrate when no one got grievously injured or died or any of the other many horrible things that could happen when fighting Grimm.

"Is that all of them?"

Ruby nodded. "Probably. You're in the clear, for now."

Someone cracked out a case of beer, though Ruby was a little too young to really enjoy it herself. She urged everyone to celebrate though and the rest of the villagers even got out of their homes and started to grill some hot dogs. A makeshift little festival.

Ruby gladly grabbed a dog and munched on it while some of the kids—who were up way past their bedtime—fiddled with her weapon. Ruby tried to tell them to at least wait until she cleaned the Grimm blood off it, but they only thought that made it so much cooler.

"So, Miss Hunter." One of the older men in the village sat next to her. They didn't really have an 'elder' but he did have some sort of authority. "I assume you'll be leaving us then?"

"Yup, sorry." Ruby took another bite of her meal. "Mpphf fjsls mppfff..." She swallowed after the man looked at her funny. "Er, Sorry. I actually have somewhere to be, so I'll leave in the morning."

"Where are you going? The least we could do is accompany you some distance for all of your help."

Ruby pointed north. "The railway."

The man nodded and looked into the bonfire that somebody had started up. It hadn't reached its full glory yet but logs were being thrown into it. Some of the kids were playing around it, the others still holding Ruby's weapon. She had made sure to lock all the functions so they couldn't accidentally kill themselves.

"How do we prevent this from happening in the future?" The man scratched his chin. "Everything worked out this time, but it seems the Grimm grow more numerous every day."

"This." Ruby waved towards the people huddling around the barbeque, chatting and laughing about their good fortune. "Just live peacefully, be happy. Try to solve problems and keep things simple. The Grimm that attacked were pretty weak, I think they were desperate. They won't always be."

"But what caused this? What do we do?"

Ruby waved her arms back and fourth. "No idea. Your guess is as good as mine."

The older man laughed, and drank from his bottle. Ruby opted for juice instead. The festivities lasted for about an hour before the parents decided it really was time for their children to go to bed, and everyone else went to bed not to long after that. Only a few guards stayed up and vigilant, just in case.

But morning came, and Ruby waved goodbye to the children as she headed out of the village. A few of the men walked with her for an hour before bidding her goodbye and returning home. Leaving Ruby alone, wandering through the Grimm-infested woods.

Such was her station.


	2. Fang

_Rose Pedals in the Snow_

 **Fang**

"La la la, _hop._ "

Ruby hopped over the gap in the bridge.

"La la la, _hop._ "

And the next one. And the next one, all the while singing. It wasn't a bridge made for walking across but rather a railway. It was made for trains, which meant that every few steps there was a big gap where there was no reason to actually have any concrete. A minor inconvenience for Ruby.

A _major_ inconvenience would be a train coming by. She wasn't quite sure what she would do in that case. Hopefully that wouldn't happen while she was on the bridge. She could see pretty far in either direction, and no trains were there are far as she could tell.

Indeed, Ruby made it to the other end of the bridge without being run down. She briefly wondered how trains managed to travel through snow and stay on the tracks. Then it occurred to her that a foot or two of snow probably didn't stop a multiple-ton monstrosity powered by raw Dust. Sometimes even Grimm got knocked aside after all.

What she _did_ know was that trains always had a sentry car a mile ahead of them to make sure the track is still intact. The rails ran through Grimm territory, and although they mostly left the lifeless hunks of metal alone they sometimes did trash them. That sentry cart was headed towards her now, so Ruby hopped off the tracks and hid behind one of the snow banks. They also served another function—watching out for anybody who had any fishy ideas about attacking the train. Ruby wasn't going to _attack_ the incoming train, just board it. But it was still technically illegal.

The sentry cart whizzed by, taking no notice of the girl that covered herself with snow. Two minutes later, the train itself chugged into view. It passed over the bridge and plowed the snow in front of it off to the sides.

"Okay Ruby, you can do this." She said to herself. She'd never hopped a train before. "It's not even going that fast, just match its speed and hop into an open container. There'll be open containers, right?"

There weren't. At least not for the first five... ten... twenty cars. This was a pretty long train. All those first cars looked heavily armored and impossible to get into. On the sides was written:

 **SCHNEE DUST COMPANY**

"That figures."

After the Schnee cars were a wide variety of other, less-guarded and less well-maintained cars. It looks like the graffiti took hold of a lot of them, and the rest were old and rusted. Ruby picked one of them whose doors were open and got ready to make her move.

As the car approached, she dashed out from behind the snow bank right towards the train. When she got next to it she changed directions so she ran parallel to it. The train was faster than her, even as she ran with the full power of her semblance behind her. But not by much and the car she wanted was coming up behind her.

With one mighty leap and—

"Omph!"

Ruby landed rather inelegantly in the car, rolling to one side and ramming into the opposite wall. She was lucky she didn't roll in one side and out the other, that would have been pathetic. Her head hurt from the impact though.

For her first time she thought it wasn't that bad.

"Who are you?" Shouted an accusing voice. Ruby shot up and grabbed the handle of her weapon. There were two others, a man and a woman.

"H-Hey guys, sorry for intruding..."

Maybe calling them her opponents was premature, but they had folding-frame weapons just like hers. They weren't standard stock either, Ruby thought they looked custom. Not to the degree she modified her own but it was the level of work most hunters put in.

After a minute of neither Ruby nor the other two making a move, Ruby noticed something as the train went around a bend and the light poured into the car.

"You two aren't guards, you're Faunus!"

The woman started to draw her weapon out from its sheath, but Ruby held up her hands.

"Woah woah, wait a minute. I'm just trying to stow away here, same as you. C-Can't we all just get along?"

Her words didn't seem to tame the girl, but her partner put his hand on her shoulder. They whispered something to each other while Ruby tried to plan out how she would escape if they came to blows. She could just bail out and try another car or another train, though she didn't want to delay her journey if she didn't have to.

"Fine, you can stay," said the cat Faunus.

Ruby wondered just exactly what they would have tried to do to her if they decided she _couldn't_ stay. But she put it out of her mind. "Thanks. My name's Ruby," she said and held out her hand.

The girl hesitated before shaking. "I'm Blake."

The man didn't see fit to give his name.

Ruby shrugged, and sat down on one end of the boxcar while they sat on the other. They didn't look like they had much to say, even when Ruby repeatedly tried to strike up a conversation with them. So after a few tries and fails, she gave up and got out her binoculars to look outside.

They were heading away from the city at a pretty fast rate, but even as fast as the train could go it was still over a day at full speed between Vale and anywhere else. Ruby wasn't quite sure how far away they were, but she figured they would probably arrive in wherever the rails headed in anywhere between eight and twelve hours.

Though Ruby wasn't sure she would get to stay on it that long. She checked the binoculars, but couldn't see anything besides the scenery. Which was plenty beautiful, but not what she was looking for.

Blake had taken out a book. Fourth time's a charm, right?

"S-So, you like books?"

Blake looked up and glared at Ruby. "Yes."

"Oh. I like them too."

Unfortunately Ruby couldn't carry more than a couple books at a time without inconveniencing herself. And the only place to browse through a large selection would be in the city. Ruby wanted a chance to say this, in some attempt to strike up a conversation or _something,_ but Blake had just looked back down at her book.

Ruby guessed she wasn't making any friends today.

A few hours passed in silence. Ruby really wanted to take a nap, but she felt she shouldn't. The male Faunus never took his eyes off her and even though Blake focused on her book, Ruby could tell she was being kept in the corner of her eye.

Ruby wasn't that worrisome, was she? She thought she was a fairly nice person.

She checked her binoculars again, sighed, and rooted through her bags for a map. It looks like the railway was going to make another bend in about twenty minutes to navigate around a lake before bending back. She would have to get off there.

Though...

"You probably should have just talked," Ruby said. Blake had put her book away, and both her and her companion had shifted their seats into something a bit more ready. As if they were both about to start something.

"I'm sorry?"

"Well, if you had said something I would have been distracted." Ruby tapped her weapon a few times. "If you had asked me about this puppy, I would have gone off on an hour-long rant minimum. Definitely wouldn't have noticed certain things. Like how if you were runaway slaves, you wouldn't have such advanced weapons. And if you were proper hunters you wouldn't be like me and stowing away on this train. Well funded, well equipped, but not hunters and definitely not police or guards. Faunas, you know."

Blake narrowed her eyes.

"If you hadn't let me think, I wouldn't have figured out you were terrorists. White Fang, right? Boy, there sure were a lot of Schnee company cars in the front of—"

Before Ruby could finish her thought, Blake drew her sword and slashed at Ruby. She parried with her scythe before it even extended to its full form and rolled to the other side of the car. This put Ruby in the awkward and ill-advised position between Blake and her partner. And her bag was over on the side, which she didn't want to lose.

She wasn't sure if she could beat them. Even if she could, it would probably derail the train.

"Now hold on a minute guys, let's talk this through."

Blake's response to that was to try to slash her again, this time with the benefit of her partner. Ruby parried again and dodged towards her bag. Now she was pinned against the corner of the boxcar, but she was at least near her bag.

"I won't stop you," Ruby said quickly. At least that caused them to not attack her. "Just do me a favor, and _look._ And if you want I'll just jump right off this car into the snow, and you'll never see me again."

"Look at what?"

Ruby gestured towards the binoculars on the floor. Blake used her sword to pick them up into her hands while the man focused on Ruby. "Out the door there, to the south."

Blake hesitantly brought the binoculars up to her eyes and looked out. She was rightfully worried Ruby would try something, so Ruby tried to stand as still as possible to make it clear she wasn't, in fact, trying anything.

"What am I looking at? Are those—Grimm? There's so many."

"Yeah. They're mammoths, at least a hundred of them. They're migrating north towards Vale."

Blake put down the binoculars. "What's this have to do with us or our situation?"

"Well it's your fault."

" _Excuse me?"_

"All of this stuff is the White Fang's fault." Ruby would have crossed her arms if she wasn't holding onto a deadly weapon. "Getting everyone all worked up and afraid is attracting Grimm. And now people like me have to deal with _that._ I've been racking my brain for weeks figuring out how I'm going to take them out, and I still have no idea."

"Fuck you." Blake held her weapon at the ready again. "I'd rather see Vale destroyed by Grimm than have my brethren spend another minute in the Schnee mines."

Ruby sighed. "You shouldn't swear."

"Are you going to leave, or are we going to have to make you leave?"

"Ahh..." Ruby slowly picked up her bag and binoculars and edged towards the door. "Well, I guess I'll see you later."

And Ruby jumped out of the car.

The snow cushioned her fall but it was still a rather hard tumble. She rolled around around until she came to a stop, and then a bank of snow fell on her. Perfect.

Ruby shot up out of the snow, hands on her hips. "Ha ha."

There was still actually a substantial amount of train left to go past her, and if she really wanted to she could just climb back on. But she was close enough to her destination already, and even if she did climb back on it was in the process of being hijacked. So maybe it would be best if Ruby stayed away.

She picked up her bag which had been flung a few meters away and headed towards the treeline. Mammoths were slow, even at a leisurely pace she could move faster than them over the course of a day. It would be weeks or even months before they actually _reached_ Vale.

Ruby would need that time to figure out how to actually stop them. She got out her map, and tried to figure out if the surrounding area would help. As it stands she didn't have the numbers nor firepower to take them all on at once. And even if she could take them one at a time she didn't have the reserve of Dust required to kill the entire migration.

The map showed an expansive forest, which was entirely unhelpful. Unless she set the entire thing on fire. _T_ _hat_ would certainly kill the entire migration. Probably. And a whole lot of other things. The fallout would probably be worse than the actual Grimm themselves though so Ruby tabled that idea.

Plus it was winter and all the trees were covered in snow. That idea just wouldn't fly.

To the north there was a small mountain range. If the Grimm were going to traverse through it they would be in a narrow, tight, enclosed space. Assuming they didn't just walk around it.

"This could work..."

Cut off the ravine, trap the mammoths, and do _something._ That something was the key, missing component. But the ravine would be the place to do the whatever it is Ruby would do.

"Okay team Ruby, time to—"

A loud rumble knocked Ruby off her feet back into the snow, followed by several more like it. She turned towards the sound, trying to brush the snow off her face and out of her hair.

Off in the distance, right where the train tracks led, was a massive colorful explosion. Clouds of snow and dust rose hundreds of feet into the air. Ruby saw scraps of metal and entire train cars flung through the air. One of them even made a brilliant arc through the sky right towards—

"Holy carp holy carp holy caraaaahhhhhhh—"

Ruby dashed to the side as quick as she could just as the flying train car rammed into where she was standing just seconds prior. Her vision turned white and she was thrown into the air with the rest of the snow. There was a horrible screeching of metal as the train car buckled in on itself into a crater in the ground.

Even when the snow and dust settled, Ruby's heart was still pounding out of her chest. Fighting Grimm and beasts was one thing, but when a giant slab of metal is about to crash into you and crush you into a fine paste, well, that was something else entirely.

After Ruby caught her breath, she took around at the devastation that she just narrowly avoided being killed by. The train car was in shambles, something had smashed into Ruby's bag and ripped it, and everything around was covered in very colorful glitter of some kind. Including Ruby herself.

Clearly the train car was carrying glitter, because the only other thing that had color like this would just be cruel. Ruby checked the side of the rubble to see if she could make out a logo.

— **HNEE DU** —

Perfect.

"Okay Ruby, okay. Everything is fine." Ruby took a few deep breaths. "So you're covered in highly explosive Dust, nothing to be concerned with. As long as you just keep still, and don't agitate it, you'll be perfectly fine. Definitely won't explode. Nope. Not today, no sir."

 _Oh my god I'm going to die._

"Nope, just gotta... gotta... t-take off my clothes..."

The fact it was dead cold actually worked in her favor here, not a lot of her skin or hair was exposed. So all the Dust that was on "her" was actually on "her clothes." She slowly removed her scarf and unzipped her coat, carefully placing it on the ground. Then she took off her pants and shoes, leaving Ruby in her long underwear, socks and undershirt. It was substantially colder, but at least there wasn't any Dust on her anymore.

But she wouldn't last long without them. She had some extra clothes packed away in her bag, which was torn and likewise covered with dust. She decided to just back away from the highly volatile area for now, though she didn't have many options.

The only other sign of civilization was the still-ongoing gigantic chain of explosions and gunfire that was apparently the still-active train heist. Although it was less of a heist now and more of a full frontal assault. Or maybe egregious disaster. Either way Ruby really didn't want to go near it.

Then Ruby got an idea. A terrible, terrible, but potentially viable idea.

 _Maybe I could use it up._

Ruby was a hunter, and among other things they were trained in how to _use_ Dust. They usually kept it in nice little capsules like how Ruby used in her weapon, or some other safe mechanism, but it was still possible to use just raw and out in the open.

"Okay, let's try this."

Ruby carefully crept back towards her things, and prepared her scythe. She would swing it in an arc, using the dust below her as a catalyst for a blast of air away from her. It was the safest thing she could think of that would use a lot of Dust.

"Deep breaths, Ruby. Deep breaths. One, uh. One and a half. Two."

Deep breath.

And Ruby unleashed the storm. Some amount of Dust got absorbed from beneath her and transferred into a windstorm that was used to blow the rest of it in the area away from her.

Which promptly exploded.

And apparently she didn't get all of it around her because that exploded too, throwing Ruby and all her things in the air. Which of course caught caught in the gust of wind Ruby had generated, which only served to throw her and her things around further.

Ruby ended up face-first some distance away in the snow. But she wasn't covered in Dust! All of it had exploded away.

She was wet and cold though. She ran around trying to gather her things, or whatever of it had survived. Her black-and-red coat fared just fine, which she donned immediately. She also found a pair of surviving pants, and her shoes were fine, although they were both ripped a little bit. That was fine, it would do.

Her tent had a big hole in it, and her other belongings ranged from mildly damaged to completely ruined. But she had enough to keep going, and that was the important thing.

After this thing with the mammoths she was going back to Vale though.

Ruby found a nice quiet spot in the forest to pitch her tent and start a fire. With luck there wouldn't be any more crazy explosions or Faunas trying to kill her or anything. Just a nice quiet night. Which for the longest time it turned out to be. She ate a simple dinner of canned beans and got into her ripped tent which still _mostly_ functioned, letting herself doze off into dreamland.

But she awoke. Far earlier than she expected, it was still dark out. But there was a light coming from outside her tent. It flickered as if from a campfire, but Ruby distinctly remembered having put it out.

Ruby grabbed a knife, made sure her scythe was nearby and hastily ripped open the door of her tent.

Sitting there on a log, nonchalantly, was the Faunus Blake. She was roasting something attached to a stick over the fire. When she noticed Ruby, she waved. Wait, no, she was raising her hand in the air as if in surrender.

"Blake? What are you... uh, eating?" Ruby's eyes drifted to what looked like a mouse on the end of the stick. "No no, I mean, doing. What are you doing?"

She looked into the fire. "I'm not here to hurt you or anything. I'm sorry about earlier."

"I saw the explosion. It almost killed me." Ruby didn't put down her knife, but emerged from the tent to get near the warmth of the fire. "Hijacking didn't go well?"

"No, it—"

"How many people do you think you killed? That train, how many guards— _how many of them do you think you killed?_ " Ruby's grip on her knife was tight. "Dammit, I knew I should have done something. I just walked away like a coward and let you—"

"No one," Blake said. "Automated train, there wasn't anyone on it. Or at least there shouldn't have been."

"I _could_ have been," Ruby shouted. " _Someone_ could have been."

"I'm sorry. I am, I really am—that's why I came to find you." Blake looked down, unable to meet Ruby's eyes. "I-I knew the White Fang has been too violent for a long while, but they're... they're my friends. Or they were. But you're right. Fuck, dammit."

"You should turn yourself in."

Blake stayed silent. The only sound was the cackling of the fire.

Ruby sat down on a log opposite Blake after clearing some snow off it. "Well?"

"I—" Blake bit her lip. "About the Grimm. You were right. More people need to fight them, so I wanted..."

Even though she couldn't complete her thought, Ruby picked up on Blake's desire. But it wasn't something Ruby was sure she would be okay with. Sitting across from her was a _terrorist_ _,_ someone who should be carted off to jail to spend the rest of her miserable days. Just by associating with her, Ruby was putting herself at risk.

Before Ruby could say no, Blake stuck her rat-stick into the ground and stood up. Ruby tightened the grip on her knife just in case, but Blake walked a few paces away and grabbed two black duffel bags. She heaved them over towards the fire.

"You said you didn't know how to kill the mammoths." Blake unzipped one of the duffel bags and showed Ruby inside. "You can now."

Ruby's eyebrows nearly arched off her face. Inside the duffel bag was a massive Dust storage tube. It was sealed and the Dust inert, or at least as inert as Dust could possibly be. But there was a ton of it, enough to blow up a hundred trains. Or sell for a solid fifty thousand lien, minimum.

Or enough to kill a heard of Grimm.

"This doesn't mean I think what you did was okay," Ruby said.

"It wasn't. Please let me make amends."

Ruby nodded and stuck her knife into the log of the tree before telling Blake the plan. Their first step would be to hike to the canyon, a few days away by foot. They would beat the herd there no problem as long as they kept a solid pace, but if they wanted time to plan once they got there they would need to be quick.

With Ruby's semblance of speed and Blake's natural ability as a Faunus, they would make it in under two days. Though actually finding a proper spot to lay their trap was something else entirely. They climbed up the side of the ravine to try to get a better lay of the land, but it was night before they could do anything proper.

They found a nice cave to stay the night.

"The mammoths will be here in three days or so," Ruby said. She was making some etchings in the dirt with a stick. Blake nodded along with Ruby's explanation, and they both ate some food-from-a-can for dinner.

They still didn't have much to talk about.

"So, you like books?" Blake asked.

Ruby nodded. "Yeah. My mom used to read them to me. Then my sister did after..." Ruby trailed off. "Well, I don't have any right now though."

"Oh." The conversation was rather stilted. It made Ruby feel awkward, but the whole situation was a bit off anyways. "I don't know about my family. Basically raised by the White Fang. They didn't used to be... how they are."

"I don't really remember. I didn't pay attention to that stuff until recently."

"One of the guys always had lots of books. He was really nice and taught me to read."

Once they found a book they had both read, the conversation became less stilted. In an effort to talk about anything "real" they discussed the book, and then some more they discovered they had both read. Their tastes were somewhat different, Ruby liked the heroic ones while Blake preferred the more gritty and down-to-earth ones.

Ruby still wasn't sure she trusted Blake, not even close. But they had to sleep, and Ruby didn't actually know how she was supposed to "sleep with one eye open." Blake seemed willing to go to bed first though, and once she was asleep Ruby decided she would reciprocate that trust.

Plus she was really tired and wanted to sleep.

The next day, they had to scout out a location in the ravine. The migration was long, so they had to pick a location very precisely. They didn't find a good spot until near the end of the day, after hiking up and down the mountains. Ruby was exhausted, but Blake didn't seem any worse for wear.

"I'd kill to have your stamina," Ruby said between breaths.

The chosen location was actually a small little open area in the ravine. Ruby was banking on the Grimm using it to stay the night, so a lot of Grimm would circle around in one place. Not all of them would fit, but it would be the best spot to do the most damage.

"We need to find a safe place," Blake offered. "If we do this."

Ruby nodded, and they spent the rest of the evening finding a place to camp out. Somewhere on high ground. They couldn't find a cave, so Ruby and Blake had to share the tent.

Well, if Blake hadn't betrayed her the _previous_ night, it was probably safe.

The next day, they set the Dust containers up where they needed to be, took their positions, and waited.

And waited and waited.

Ruby's binoculars were blown up back at the railway, so she had to use the scope on her sniper to look in the distance. It wasn't nearly as easy, but it was better than nothing.

Eventually, the mammoths marched into view. Ruby signaled to Blake, and got ready.

For all her plans though, it looked like the mammoths had no intention of stopping in the nice little area Ruby designated. The lead Grimm just marched right on through it, and the rest following.

"Dammit, so much for that idea." Ruby said. Blake shrugged.

"Just do it."

Ruby aimed her rifle carefully. Not at the Grimm, but a good deal above the Grimm, above the ravine, to the mountainside above. Where there was a carefully placed charge of Dust. With the pull of a trigger, an explosive shot hurled with near-perfect accuracy towards a large container of volatile Dust.

They had removed that limiter that made it inert.

The mountainside was lit up by a colorful explosion, sending snow and rock everywhere. A loud rumble echoed throughout the canyon. Ruby spun around, and lined up the next shot and blew up the second container.

Then Ruby crossed her fingers and hoped really really hard—

"It's working," Blake said and gestured towards the mountain.

A large sheet of snow suddenly lurched as if being dislodged, and picked up speed as it plowed downwards. The rumble was way louder than Ruby expected it to be, she had to hold her hands over her ears. Blake too was similarly affected.

The avalanche poured into the ravine, burying the mammoth Grimm under tons of snow and ice. It was as if the entire mountainside was collapsing. And it just-so-happened to collapse right onto the massive migration of Grimm.

They had to wait until the avalanche stopped before they could say anything without being drowned out. Ruby was the first to comment.

"I can't believe that worked."

It hadn't worked perfectly. A few of the mammoths near them weren't buried, and the ones in the far back didn't get hit by the avalanche at all. They probably took out a majority of the herd, but there were plenty left.

And all it took was a massive amount of Dust exploding in coordinated positions. And Ruby wasn't even an expert on the terrain. One of the more seasoned hunters probably would have known where to better place them to be more effective.

"There's some survivors," Blake said. She drew her sword and pointed it towards a few of the mammoths nearby that were howling in pain and agony. Ruby nodded.

"A whole bunch more in the back too. Let's be careful."

The key to this last step in their plan was not to take on more than they could handle. Working together they could overpower a single Mammoth Grimm with not too much effort, though a healthy amount of Dust, but any more than that and they would get overwhelmed.

The ones already injured in the snow were easy pickings. But the Grimm near the back of the migration had already turned around and were retreating. Ruby used her rifle to pump high-velocity Dust bullets into them from a distance, but eventually she ran out of ammo. And they couldn't advance into melee safely any more.

"I think that's good," said Ruby. There was a massive smile on her face. "Today is a good day. We did good today."

Even a small smile crept up on Blake's face.

"Ha, see?" Ruby poked her. "Feels good to do something _good,_ doesn't it? Who knows what these Grimm could have done, how many people they would have hurt. Faunus? Humans? The Grimm don't care."

"I think..." Blake looked down at the devastation they caused. The potential storm they stopped in its tracks. "I think I might want to follow you, for a bit. If that's alright."

"I sure hope you mean that," Ruby said.

"I do."

"Good." Ruby hoisted her scythe up over her shoulder. "Because we're going to the city."


	3. Veil

_Rose Pedals in the Snow_

 **Veil**

"Papers?"

Ruby frowned at the gate guard. "I don't have any papers. I'm in the system, Ruby Rose."

"This goes faster if you bring your ID card," the guard said while punching stuff into his computer.

"They don't give me them anymore. The first one caught on fire, the second one fell into a lake, the third got eaten by a boar, the fourth—"

" _I get it._ " The guard interrupted. "I see your info here, you're free to go."

Ruby nodded and jogged to catch up to Blake, who _had_ a valid ID card and therefore simply walked through after flashing it to the guard. The large wall surrounding the city of Vale vigilantly guarded by minimum-wage security rent-a-cops.

Apparently Blake wasn't a known criminal, because Ruby had been looking around for wanted posters and such things of her, but there were none. It seems the investigation into the train was still underway. There _was_ news of that playing on a television, and White Fang was named as the perpetrator.

"So, I have to stop off at the guild," Ruby said. "Get paid and all that. You deserve credit as much as me, so—"

Blake shook her head. "No thanks."

"Got it. There's a shop down the street called _From Dust till Dawn,_ let's meet there after."

Blake nodded and walked away. Ruby took a different street to go to the Hunter's Guild. The building was tall and a bit flashy, with an elaborate fountain in front and well-kept gardens. It wouldn't be Ruby's first aesthetic choice, but such was life. It always made her feel a bit out-of-place. Her clothes were torn and patched together, and now her coat was a little burned around the edges. Far from pristine like the building she walked into.

The man behind the counter gave her a nod. "Hello Ruby. You look like hell."

"Uh huh."

"Here to report? You can take room one."

Ruby walked over to the double doors to the right of the counter, and down the hallway beyond. Immediately to her left was a room marked " **Report Room 1.** " Ruby opened the door and sat down at the desk.

This part of being a hunter was in some ways the best, but also the most tedious. Actually being compensated for their work. It was a pretty simple system, the more Grimm you slayed (and had evidence of slaying) the more you were paid. There were also other factors here and there, but that was the gist of it. Enough that Ruby really cared to understand, at least.

She filled out some of the paperwork there and unclipped the cameras off her body. One on her shoulder, one on her belt, one on her shoe and one embedded into the scope of her rifle. They were so small Ruby usually forgot they were there, but without them Ruby wouldn't be paid for her efforts. Then she set her mobile down next to them, where the actual data was stored.

About five minutes after Ruby had finished all the paperwork someone actually walked in to review it.

"Miss Goodwitch," Ruby exclaimed. "I-I didn't expect you to be here."

"I work here."

"Well, I mean. I just." Ruby's face went a deep shade of red, and she slid across everything on the desk. "Here's my paperwork please stop looking at me funny I'm just a huge fan sorry."

Goodwitch grabbed the clipboard the papers were attached to and looked over what Ruby had written down. "Did you make a mistake here?"

"Sorry? Where?"

"Here, you wrote down 'tilde one hundred' for number of Goliath subtypes slain. Did you mean ten?"

Ruby shook her head. "It's accurate. You can verify the footage."

Goodwitch paused, and kept looking at Ruby funny. She sunk low into her chair, trying to avoid that gaze. No wonder Goodwitch was such a good hunter, she probably just stared down the Grimm to death.

"I will," Goodwitch said and picked up Ruby's phone and cameras, taking them from the room. Which was odd, there was AV equipment set up already so they could just do it together. Why was Ruby not included this time?

She didn't really know what to do, and Goodwitch took her phone so she didn't have anything to play with. Except her weapon, but taking it out in such a small enclosed space would be rather rude. Better here than somewhere else, but still.

"La di da..."

If Ruby could whistle, she would be whistling. But instead she just tapped her fingers on the desk for awhile, then stood up and ran around the desk a few times, then layed across the desk and stared up at the ceiling.

It was half an hour before anyone came back. Two people came back, actually. Goodwitch again, and the Guild Master himself, Ozpin.

"Miss Ruby, is it?" He asked. "Sorry for the wait."

"Am I in trouble or something?"

"Whatever for?" Ozpin asked. "You simply made quite an impressive claim, Glinda here rightfully suspected it might be a scam."

"But I have footage," Ruby protested. Ozpin waved her down with one of his hands, the other on his cane.

"We know, and it checks out. We just had to make sure, you know how it is. Taking out this many Goliaths is unheard of in a lifetime, let alone in one day. There was another person in your video though, doesn't she want credit as well?"

Ruby put her hands in her lap. "She said she didn't want any. If she changes her mind and comes back, I won't protest it. I couldn't have done it without her."

Ozpin grunted, and shifted his cane. "This is the sort of victory the Huntsman Guild would really like to publicize. Would you be willing to make a statement, or maybe go on camera?"

Ruby shook her head and waved her arms back and fourth. "No no no, please don't make me do that."

"Are you sure? This could make you one of the top-ranked active huntresses in the entire guild."

Ruby shook her head again, causing both Ozpin and Goodwitch to sigh.

"Very well. You'll find you've been well-compensated for your effort. The guild itself will take credit for your kills without naming any names, should you change your mind I'd hurry back here before tomorrow evening."

Ozpin left the room, leaving Goodwitch to return Ruby her cameras and phone. She didn't turn them on, there was no real point in the city. Grimm attacks in the city were a near-impossibility, at least for now. Though with the rising number of Grimm circling Vale, that may be subject to change.

Or it may not, what did Ruby know.

"If I may," Goodwitch said before Ruby could leave. "What did you use to cause the avalanche? The explosions looked like Dust, but the amount required to cause it would be astronomical."

Ruby was afraid of this. "S-Sorry, that was my partner's doing. All I did was shoot it."

Goodwitch didn't seem satisfied, but let Ruby go regardless. She found herself back on the street just as the streetlights started to turn on. It was the middle of winter so the shops still stayed open several hours after sundown.

A light snow sprinkled down on the street as Ruby walked towards the Dust shop. She stopped by the bank first and then headed into the store. The lights were on, but despite there being a lot of open space the store was nearly deserted. It was usually like that, hunters didn't actually need to resupply all that often.

Or, at least Ruby didn't. She didn't actually know a lot about what other hunters did.

"What are you even doing here? You really think someone _like you_ can afford these?"

Ruby turned towards the voice. It didn't seem to be aimed at her.

"Dirty Faunus like you should get out of here, you're just stinking up the place."

Some girl dressed in a whole lot of white was bullying Blake. Ruby actually admired the contrast for a moment, the girl in all white and the girl in all black. But seeing as how Ruby and Blake were traveling companions now, she figured she should step in.

"H-Hey, stop bullying her." Ruby said.

"Excuse me?" The girl put her hands on her hips. "You're _defending_ her? You know what her kind did, right? They blew up one of our trains just the other day."

"Well, well _—_ " Ruby said, but realized she didn't actually have a response. Something like 'they're not all bad' or 'don't stereotype' would have been appropriate, were Blake not the _actual person_ who _actually blew it up._ Even though she didn't realize it, this girl was actually correct here.

Blake looked on with a cold gaze, but said nothing.

"See, you don't even have a response."

"Well, you can't tell her not to use the store," Ruby protested. "We're hunters, and this is a Dust shop."

Her response was to snort. "You two, really? Don't you know who I am? I'm Weiss Schnee, the number-one ranked junior huntress in Vale. What about _you?_ Are you even top fifty?"

Ruby shrugged. "I dunno, I'm unlisted."

"W-What?" Weiss took a step back. "Why would you—? Oh, I get it, you're so embarrassed you don't even want to be associated with your rank, is that it?"

Ruby was going to explain, but before she could Weiss brushed passed them and said something along the lines of 'not having enough time to deal with people like them.' She and Blake didn't really want to stop her since she was leaving the store.

"What a bitch," Blake said once Weiss was out of earshot.

"Please don't swear."

"She is."

"Didn't say you were wrong." Ruby reached into her pocket and pulled out a few cards. "Here's your cut for the mammoths, it's a lot."

Blake thanked her for the cash, and they proceeded to shop around the store. It was only them and the shopkeeper, who apologized for his rude customer. He insisted there wasn't anything he could do since the Schnee Company was his only supplier, and Ruby insisted back it was really fine and not to worry about it.

Ruby replenished her regular supply, but didn't overspend. She had to also replace a lot of her camping equipment since it was damaged. She could just repair it, but it was already getting old anyways. Better to just refresh everything. She was flush with cash now anyways.

The shopkeeper thanked them for their patronage and they both left the store, pockets full of Dust. Metaphorically that is, it was actually all kept in very secure containers so it wouldn't blow up.

"So, umm." Ruby scratched the back of her neck. "Why didn't you fight back, or something?"

They walked for a long distance before Blake responded. Ruby had thought she had just been ignored and stayed silent, but eventually Blake did respond.

"It's not worth it. Easier to just stay silent and wait for people like that to—"

A window crashed before Blake could complete her thought, shatters of glass spilling onto the street. A man in a vest fell onto the ground at their feet, bloody and very unconscious. Both of them reached for their weapons.

A blonde leaped out of the window after the body, a lot more in control of her herself. Blake readied her sword, but—

"Yang?"

Yang looked up. "Oh, hey 'sis. What're you doing in town?"

Ruby nudged the unconscious guy with her foot. Yup, still unconscious. "Not as much as you, it seems."

"Ha ha, sorry." Yang walked over and ruffled Ruby's hair. "Just taking care of business. Missing person, it's a whole thing. Who's your friend?"

"This is Blake."

Blake held out her hand to shake.

"Faunus, huh." Yang returned it. "Surprised to see you with Ruby, she used to be _terrified_ of you."

"D-D-Don't tell her that!"

That actually got a light chuckle out of Blake, the first time Ruby had seen her show any emotion whatsoever. Yang took it in stride and pulled a keyring out of her pocket, tossing it to Ruby. She fumbled the catch a few times, but caught it before dropping them.

"Thanks," Ruby said. "Are you sure we won't be a bother?"

"Aww Ruby, you're free to crash at my place any time." Yang put her foot on top of her victim. "Just gotta finish up here and I'll meet you back there. You'll have to pick up dinner, there's no food in the fridge."

Ruby knew how to hunt, skin and cook an animal in the wilderness, but actual cooking was outside her area of expertise. The same apparently went for Blake, and Ruby was fairly certain her sister did not suddenly pick up the skill in the past few months.

So microwave dinners it was. Better than something out of a can, but not by all that much. Yang's place was the exact same since Ruby had seen it last. Clothes everywhere, junk lying about, dishes clogging the sink. Ruby decided to tidy up a little bit while Blake sat on the couch and watched the television.

Blake flipped through the channels until landing on a report about the train attack. It was an overtly-biased news report against the White Fang. Ruby wondered why Blake even watched it, it didn't paint her comrades in any positive light at all.

"They'll probably broadcast something about the ravine tomorrow," Ruby offered. Blake grunted in response.

After Ruby cleaned up and they ate their dinners, Ruby sat on the couch with Blake and the television-watching resumed. This was one of those activities Ruby just didn't get to do on the road. She could watch some things off her phone, _sure,_ if the signal was strong. But it wasn't the same.

Yang walked in during some lighthearted kid show Ruby was absolutely loving, but Blake seemed a bit bored of. She gave a long whistle as she dropped her bag onto the floor. "Damn you guys, you've been busy."

"What? You mean the place?" Ruby looked around. "I just tidied up a little."

"Not that—oh, thanks by the way." Yang walked over to the fridge and grabbed what Ruby had bought her for dinner. "Naw, what I meant was the guild. There's all this gossip about a buncha Goliaths getting slaughtered. You, right?"

"Eheh, caught us."

Yang scrunched on the couch next to Ruby. They were all kind of close together as they watched the TV. They wasted the night away watching mind-numbing shows until bed time. They pulled out Yang's extra mattress for Blake while Ruby and Yang would just sleep in the same bed.

"Hey," Blake said softly once all the lights were off, and they were just lying there.

"Sup?" Asked Yang.

"Are you really okay with me staying here?"

"Oh sure." Yang rustled in her sheets. "Faunus stay here all the time, they're great in the sack. Oh, sorry Ruby."

"Please let's not talk about this Yang I don't want to picture that."

Girl talk didn't continue for much longer after that, they were all exhausted. But Ruby thought she heard a soft "thanks" from Blake before drifting off to sleep.

Yang's apartment didn't get much sunlight apparently, because Ruby didn't wake up until fairly late in the morning. Yang and Blake had already gotten up and left the room and the smell of eggs wafted in from the kitchen.

Ruby shuffled in, lured by the smell of eggs and coffee. Yang saw her first and shoved a cup in her hands.

"Morning."

"Mphfgsg." Ruby took the cup and sipped out of it before wandering over to the couch to drink her morning coffee. She stared at the television, which was turned off. The effort required to turn it on was beyond what she was willing to expend at the moment.

After her mug was empty she wandered back to the kitchen table to find Yang and Blake in the middle of conversation. They got along a lot better than Ruby expected them too, though that might have just been how Yang got along with everybody.

"Want some eggs?"

Ruby nodded. "Don't burn them."

"Oh come on, that only happened once."

Breakfast was fine, the eggs perfectly average tasting. Ruby squirted ketchup into them to add a little flavor. Yang wasn't the type to bother adding anything like salt, let alone actual seasonings.

A few hours later and all of them were fully awake and ready to take on the day. There was a light snowfall the previous night, but the sun was shining bright and illuminating the whole town. Ruby wished that the outer beauty matched the inner.

A patrol of guards marched by, creating tracks in the snow.

"So, what're you guys up to today?" Yang asked. Blake shrugged.

"Shopping. All my stuff was trashed," replied Ruby.

"Oh that sounds fun, take me with you."

Blake did not wish to follow, so they split up and agreed to meet back at Yang's later. Ruby had all manner of things she needed to buy, though most of them were from the same store. The camping supplies and sporting goods store had everything from lanterns to tents to knives to a new pair of binoculars. Ruby just bought a cheap pair though, she would have to go to a specialty store for a proper pair she could actually use with her rifle.

Yang didn't have much input on any of that. When they went to buy clothes though, that's when she started to shine. Ruby didn't like to branch out much, but Yang had a way of picking outfits that were just on the fridge of Ruby's comfort zone. Enough to mix things up, but not enough to make her nervous.

Ruby loved her older sister.

"Try this one next," Yang said and tossed over a pair of pants. "They're perfect for winter. They say this one's going to last awhile, we haven't even seen the worst of it."

"Is that so?" Ruby took off her pants with a rip in them to try on the new pair. "Maybe I should visit the islands. I bet it's warm down there."

Yang stayed quiet.

"Sis?"

"S-Sorry. I was just kind of hoping, you know, you'd stay here."

Another long silence.

"How long will you be in town?"

Ruby pulled back the curtain to reveal her new outfit. Yang gave it the thumbs up after Ruby did a little twirl. "Few days, maybe," Ruby said. "I was just joking about the islands thing, I don't think I'll be venturing too far from Vale for the foreseeable future."

"Oh?" Yang pulled Ruby back to check the tags on her pants. "You're buying this, by the way. If you're hanging around here anyways, you should join the tourny."

"D-Do I have to?"

"Yep, you do. It'll be a good way for you to meet other huntsmen. Do you even know any besides me and Blake?"

"Yes, yes I do," Ruby protested. "I met, like, four."

Yang rolled her eyes. Ruby knew there were a lot more than four hunters in the world, but it wasn't really likely to run into anyone else while wandering around outside the city. She had liked the four she had met though. Or five, or however many it was. She wasn't sure if some of them actually counted.

"Anyways, it starts tomorrow so you're going to be in town anyways, and I already signed you up."

"..."

"What?"

" _Tomorrow?"_ Ruby exclaimed. "I don't have time to prepare for _tomorrow._ I use a scythe it takes crazy modding to make that nonlethal, even more so for a sniper rifle do you even know how hard it is to make nonlethal ammo that can fire from this barrel it's designed to—"

Yang didn't seem to mind Ruby's concerns much, and simple shoved another outfit into her hands to try on. But this little revelation Ruby was already signed up for a tournament cut the shopping short. She really _did_ have to modify her scythe. Scythes were the most lethal and dangerous weapon a hunter could carry. Making them less lethal wasn't something easily done. She had to replace all the plates with dull edges but make sure the springs still worked, and all manner of things.

She had to shave off half its capabilities to get it certified as nonlethal and therefore tournament-eligible. Her perfect, pristine blade/gun hybrid felt like a club in her hands now.

At least Yang was participating too, though she already had everything she needed. Most of her work involved taking prisoners, unlike Ruby who simply had to slash her way through monsters. When the next day rolled around the two of them, and also Blake, headed to the arena. Blake wasn't a participant, just a spectator. So at the arena they had to split up.

The tournament had thirty-two participants. They would be split in half and shuffled to separate rooms, sixteen in each. They wouldn't be told who they would fight until the match began, but they knew it was someone from the opposite room. After the first round of matches they would be reshuffled into rooms and the process would begin anew until there was one winner.

Ruby and Yang ended up in separate rooms, but that still left a miniscule chance they would actually fight. It did leave Ruby alone in a room with fifteen strangers though. She decided to huddle in the corner.

"Yo, if it isn't lil' red riding hood."

Ruby looked up. "Oh, if it isn't...uh, I just called you Queen back then."

"Nora. It's okay, I don't remember your name either." Nora swung her war hammer around as if it was a lot lighter than it actually was, and let it rest over her shoulder. "I don't know whether to be pleased or terrified you're here."

Ruby fiddled with her scythe. She had trained with it a little the previous night, it was pretty close to how it normally felt. But "pretty close" was far from acceptable. If she had to fight Grimm with it, she would probably die.

Luckily she was just fighting humans, also outfitted with nonlethal weaponry. But she still fiddled with the weapon until an announcement came over the PA.

" _Welcome everyone to the twenty-fifth annual Vale Huntsman's Tournament."_

It went on, talking about things Ruby didn't care about until it finally announced the first match. Ruby wondered who would be first.

" _For match number one, in the rrrred corner, we have Miss Ruby Rose!"_

"What?" Ruby exclaimed. "I'm first? Why am I first?"

" _Miss Rose has only been registered with the guild for a year, and is in fact its youngest member. Beyond that I wish I could say more, but she's unlisted status. So we'll see how she fares, good luck Ruby."_

When Nora noticed Ruby was a bit frozen in place, she gave her a good shove out into the open. Ruby walked out into the arena surrounded on all sides by thousands of people in the stands, applauding and cheering. None of them really knew who she was. They were just excited for the tournament.

" _And in the blueeee corner, we have the prestigious Juane Arc of the Arc family. Oh, what a poor match up for the rookie in the red corner. While Mister Juane Arc has only been a huntsman for a year as well, coming from such a famous family will be hard to stand against. With twelve Grimm slain already and four missions complete, Juane has yet to climb high in rank but still shows promise. Good luck, Juane."_

Someone on the opposite side of the arena emerged, blonde hair wielding a shield and sword. Ruby thought he looked rather heroic. But his posture wasn't very heroic, just his armor was. He looked as nervous as she did.

" _The match ends on the first yield, or when the judge decides a clear winner. Take your positions."_

Ruby dug her heels into the ground, and extended her scythe. The blades sprung out slower than usual, their dullness providing too much friction. Going by the expression on her opponent's face, that actually made it look scarier.

Juane readied his shield and sword.

" _Ready... FIGHT!"_

Ruby rushed towards him with the full power of her semblance behind her, closing the gap immediately. Juane raised his shield, so Ruby swept her scythe under at his legs.

He failed to dodge at all, being swept aside. Ruby knocked him in the chest with the other end of the scythe and he fell to the ground.

He wasn't moving.

"Um, are you alright?"

Still didn't move.

" _Uh, it looks like Miss Rose is the winner? J-Judges...? Ah, yes, congratulations Miss Rose. On your rather expeditious victory."_

He was probably unconscious. Ruby didn't see any blood, though he would probably have nasty bruising. She felt sorry as she walked back to the waiting room.

"Nice job, Red." Nora said. "Though you looked a little clunkier than I remember you being."

"Yeah, the plates—"

Ruby was interrupted by a loud snort from behind her. She turned to find Weiss standing there. "I can't believe you're here, weren't you the girl with that Faunus? Why don't you stick around and watch how a real huntress fights."

"—the plates are dull. Nice to see you too, Weiss." Ruby crossed her arms. Before the argument could continue, the announcer came on the speakers again.

" _In the rrred corner, we have Miss Nora Valkyrie, ranked twenty-first junior huntress. She only has two missions complete, but with an impressive thirty-five slain Grimm she is a force to be rrreckoned with."_

"Guess that's me," Nora said and skipped out, waving her giant hammer around.

" _In the blueee corner, we have Mr. Lie Ren, ranked twenty-sixth junior huntsman. He..."_

Ruby sort of tuned the announcer out to watch the fight. She had won her first match, so all she had left to do was watch the others. Yang had been right, it was pretty interesting seeing the other hunters. They all had different fighting styles. Ruby could see how some fighting styles complimented each other, and she actually learned a bit about the hunters themselves from watching.

At least, she thought she did. She didn't really talk to them nearly as much as Yang probably wished she had. The only other person who seemed interested besides Nora was Weiss, and she was mean.

Finally the time came for the last match of the day.

" _In the rrrred corner, we have Miss Weiss Schnee. Number one ranked junior huntress in all of Vale, Miss Schnee is the heiress of the Schnee Company, who happens to be a sponsor. Thanks for that, by the way. Where was I? Oh, right. Miss Schnee has an impressive twenty-two missions complete and over one hundred Grimm slain. That rivals some senior huntsman, even."_

There was a wide round of applause. Apparently Weiss was quite the showgirl.

" _In the blueee corner, we have Miss Yang Xiao Long, number eight ranked junior huntress. She may not be first, but she can pack quite a punch all the same. With eighteen missions complete and sixty-one Grimm slain, Miss Yang is certainly tough enough to put up a fight."_

Ruby rooted for her sister, and really thought she was going to win. But the cards were not in her favor, Weiss was just too skilled. Her attitude aside she definitely knew how to fight.

After Weiss's victory all the losers were ejected from the waiting rooms and the participants were shuffled around. Both Weiss and Nora were gone now, in the other room. Ruby didn't recognize anyone else here.

A few matches went by, and Weiss got paired up with someone she didn't know. Then came Ruby's turn. She got paired with Nora. Naturally.

"Ha ha," Nora leaned on her hammer. "I was afraid of this, lil' red."

Ruby expanded her scythe.

"Don't feel bad when I smash that weapon of yours to bits."

" _Oh ho, looks like we got some trash talking going on. Don't let her get away with that, Ruby. Take your positions."_

Nora lifted her hammer and held it in her hands. Ruby lowered her stance.

" _Ready...Fight!"_

Like before, Ruby rushed towards Nora. But that tactic wouldn't work on her like it worked on Juane, she swung her hammer right where Ruby was running towards. She had to parry with her scythe and leap in the air. The hammer hit with a lot of force, and her scythe was knocked off course.

It lowered her recovery time, she had to roll away from Nora's second attack.

Ruby pumped the trigger and fired a bullet at Nora. She had loaded nonlethal rounds, but they still packed a hell of a bunch. The bullet ricocheted off of the hammer's handle.

A few more strikes back and fourth left neither one with much of an advantage. The scythe just wasn't swinging with the elegance and _cut_ it usually swung with. It felt cumbersome to swing.

"This is no fun," Nora said. "Your weapon is slowing you down."

She noticed. Well, of course she did, Ruby had told her earlier. She swung her hammer and Ruby had to jump back to dodge.

"Where's the girl that was covered in wolf blood?" Nora advanced on Ruby, actually putting her on the _defensive._ "Come on, you were so cool back then."

Ruby's next parry was off the mark, her scythe slower than she was used to. Nora used the opportunity to rush Ruby, and she had to drop her weapon.

That was the end of it right there.

" _Winner... Nora Valkrie. Well fought, you two."_

Ruby sighed, and retrieved her poor scythe.

"It's okay baby, I'll undo all those horrible horrible mods." She stroked the scythe. "We'll make you nice and sharp again. Sharper even!"

Nora laughed.

Rather than go back and face Weiss's ridicule, Ruby just headed up to the stands to find Yang and Blake to watch the rest of the tournament. It took awhile to actually find them, it was a large crowed. They had to communicate through text messages to locate one another.

Yang was sitting with a giant tub of popcorn. Blake was stealing some of it. Ruby decided to sit down next to them when the person already there made room. He also gave Ruby a token comment about how cool her scythe looked. She thanked him for it, but honestly she didn't think it was cool. It sucked.

She wanted to go home and fix it.

"Ruby Ruby." Yang slapped her sister on the back. "You're way too used to fighting Grimm. Fighting people is different y'know."

"It was this clunky weapon."

"No, it really wasn't." Yang looked like she wanted to elaborate, but then Ruby gave her puppy dog eyes. She couldn't respond.

"She's right," Blake said, picking up the slack. "Your moves weren't effective against other huntsman, just Grimm. The fighting style is different."

"But, but, I don't _want_ to fight other hunters."

"Aha..."

The tournament dragged on late into the evening until someone named Pyrrha won. It was a lot more enjoyable for Ruby when she didn't have to worry about actually participating.


	4. Watch

_Rose Petals in the Snow_

 **Watch**

"Alright, so this icon here represents the Schnee Quarry."

Ruby pointed to a little drawing on her paper map which she had unrolled over Yang's kitchen table. They were using mugs and beer bottles to keep it from rolling back up.

"And ten miles West of it is the fort I want to go to. It doesn't really have a name." Ruby put a finger on her chin. "Well, it probably has a name. I just don't know what it is, and it's not written down here. Anyways, it's derelict and infested with Grimm so I figured we should clear it out."

Blake and Yang hovered over the map trying to get a good look at what Ruby was pointing at. The map was a fairly detailed terrain map, so Ruby had to clarify what it actually meant. Hunters generally used digital maps, but Ruby preferred the feel of a paper one. Paper ones didn't have the benefit of layers, however.

Snow started to fall lightly outside Yang's only window. Ruby took a sip of her cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows. The corner of the map it was holding up started to curl before Yang grabbed it.

"So why are you doing this again?" Yang asked.

"There's Grimm there."

"You said."

"Isn't that enough?" Ruby put her mug back down.

Blake accepted this reasoning without question, but it was the reason she was here in the first place. Yang didn't seem so convinced. She shrugged it off.

"This only looks to be about fifty miles away, do you mind if I tag along?" Yang asked.

"Really?" Ruby exclaimed. "That would be so awesome if you would come."

"Is Blake okay with it?"

She was, or at least she timidly nodded. Ruby hadn't really tried to be Blake's boss or anything but that's sort of the way it turned out. She almost felt like her warden or something.

Well, she kind of was.

"You'll need gear," Ruby said. "Do you have any?"

"Of course, lil' sis. I taught you, after all."

"Those who can't do, teach Yang."

"Ouch."

Yang did have the gear though, or at least most of it. According to her she hadn't been out of the city in quite a while and some items had gone obsolete or broken in some way. But that wasn't anything a quick shopping trip couldn't fix.

The next day they would set out on their journey to the fort. The weather seemed to hold steady at an occasional light snowfall, which could be a lot worse. The three of them walked up to the north gate of Vale. The wall was tall and thick, the snow failing to stick to its slick edges.

"Papers?"

Yang and Blake slide their ID cards through the scanner and walked to the other side. Ruby, as before, did not have such a card and told the gate operator her information. He typed away on his computer for a moment. Then his expression furled.

"Excuse me, Miss Rose. Would you mind waiting for a minute?"

Ruby frowned. "Umm, why?"

A couple of guards emerged from one of the doors inside the gate. They didn't have their weapons in their hands or anything, but Ruby had a bad feeling.

"Please Miss Rose. We have a room in the back."

The gatekeeper was being light, but his implication was clear. _You're being held for questioning or searched, stop resisting._ Ruby considered whether or not to comply or just rush the gate, it wasn't actually all that well defended and she was fast. Very fast.

But that would only make things a whole lot worse, so Ruby accompanied the men to the back. Yang and Blake gave each other looks, but didn't interfere. There wasn't much they could do to help at this point.

Ruby was led to a simple room in the back with a table and two chairs. The guards let her in and closed the door. She hadn't heard a clicking sound of a lock, but that was no guarantee. She decided not to try the door though. They had let her keep her pack and weapon, so she clearly wasn't under arrest.

It took about fifteen minutes for someone to come. Ruby was fidgeting in her cold, steel chair when the door opened and in walked Glinda Goodwitch. She ignored Ruby's confused expression and sat down in the chair opposite her.

"I apologize for the wait," she said.

"Miss Goodwitch. What is this about?"

"You've been with the guild for about ten months now, correct?"

"Uh, yes."

"And what have you been doing for those ten months?"

Ruby furled her brow at the odd question. "Being a hunter? You know, slaying Grimm, going on adventures. That sort of stuff."

"And one of these adventures was to the Azure Ravine to slay a herd of Goliaths, was it now?"

"Y-You already know that. What is this about, Miss Goodwitch?"

Goodwitch pushed her glasses up on her face, and pulled something out of her bag. It was a pair of broken binoculars. Actually, Ruby thought they looked kind of familiar. "These," Goodwitch said, "are yours. I traced the serial number. They were recovered about twenty miles away from the ravine along the train tracks. Among rubble from the train that was attacked by the White Fang. Care to explain?"

Ruby put her hands in her lap to hide their shaking. "I, umm—"

"Were someone to take the lazy route of investigating, they might assume you were associated with such an attack. Maybe even you were White Fang yourself, despite not being a Faunus. You were seen associating with one after all."

"That's crazy," Ruby shouted. "How can you think I'm a terrorist?"

"You don't spend very much time in Vale, do you? I've looked at your gate logs. You left Vale the day after registering as a huntress and didn't return for two months. You only stayed a week before leaving again, this time not returning for another four months. Then again you left, four days later, before returning one week ago. And now you're leaving again. Most huntsman go on a mission and immediately report back. You haven't gone on any missions at all, your entire service is exclusively slaying Grimm."

"I—"

"But you registered yourself as unlisted, so your number of kills is not tracked nor are you ranked."

"I don't understand what you're saying," Ruby protested.

"Then allow me to elaborate." Goodwitch leaned on the table. "When you spend that much time alone in the wilderness, sometimes it's hard to remember what is the right thing to do. Perhaps you're wandering around and opportunity falls into your lap. It can be hard to pass it up, especially when you're so goal-oriented. You can justify it because of your atrophied morals, 'you must kill the Grimm' overrides your other thoughts."

Ruby stayed silent. Goodwitch leaned back in her chair.

"Or, perhaps you were simply a junior huntress in the wrong place at the wrong time. And confronted with such an intense situation, you fled and didn't know what to do. Which of those should go into my report?"

It took awhile before Ruby figured out what to say. Her silence probably told Goodwitch all she needed to know, but neither of them said anything while she thought. The ticking of the clock on the wall almost echoed in the silence.

But when it came down to it, Ruby could only think of one thing to say.

"I am not White Fang and I do not support their methods."

Didn't seem to be quite what Goodwitch wanted to hear, but she nodded all the same. "You know, Ruby, even though you were unlisted and your statistics are not tracked, I decided to count them all up regardless. Do you want to know the number? Or do you already know it?"

As expected of Goodwitch, she was thorough. Ruby shrugged. "I lost track."

"Four hundred fourteen confirmed. You personally have had more of an impact fighting against the Grimm than the entire combined efforts of the rest of the junior huntsman in Vale. It would not be in the guild's best interest to hinder such an effect with a redundant, bureaucratic investigation. I'm sure by the time you return this incident will be long forgotten."

"I, uh." Ruby pulled her jacket tighter. "Thank you."

"I'm certain I haven't done you any favors," Goodwitch said. "Now be on your way."

As Ruby headed back out of the gatehouse and into the wilderness, she wondered just how close she had come to getting arrested. At least Goodwitch had the sense not to even though it seemed like she really did know the entire circumstances. That was one of the reasons why Ruby looked up to Goodwitch, she really was a hunter at heart.

The journey north started out rather ordinary. Since they were going in a similar direction to the Schnee Quarry, they could just follow the railway for most of the time. It did have the unfortunate side-effect of making the trip boring though. Endlessly following a road for days didn't leave much room for exploring and adventure.

Every night they did make their campsite about fifteen minutes away from the rails though. There wasn't any reason trains wouldn't run at night, and it would wake them up if they pitched their tents right along the rails.

Plus Ruby wanted to make sure they slept in defensible terrain, just in case. Grimm had snuck up on her at night one time too many for her not to take such precautions.

"Look what I got," Yang said. In her hands were three rabbits. "I haven't done this in awhile, thought I might be rusty."

Ruby and Blake each took one of the rabbits and started skinning it. Grimm didn't tend to bother the animals too much, so the forests of Vale were thriving with life. Although now that forest was three rabbits short, but those numbers would replenish quickly enough.

Before long, three rabbits were cooking over a roaring campfire.

"They're starting to smell good."

Ruby nodded. "Give it another few minutes."

The meat sizzled and cackled under the fire. The three girls waited anxiously for them to fully cook, and dug in when that time finally arrived. Rabbit was something Ruby had all the time but it was still delicious. It's a lot easier to hunt than carry around tons of canned food. Villages were sporadic outside the city and rarely stayed in one place for long. There just wasn't a guarantee that a hunter could restock their supplies on demand.

Luckily they were only going a short distance from Vale. Five days at a solid pace, three if they ran. That wasn't anything worrisome at all.

Yang was the first to finish her dinner, followed by Blake and Ruby.

"Hey 'sis. Don't you get tired of this?"

Ruby looked over at Yang. "Tired of what? Camping?"

"Yeah. Don't get me wrong, I'm having a blast. But that's because I haven't done this in months whereas you do it every day."

"I dunno." Ruby shifted on her log to get closer to the fire. "Don't you get tired of living in your apartment every day?"

"Well I mean—" Yang paused. "Hmm."

Blake threw another log onto the fire with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. "The city isn't a great place to live."

Yang looked over at Blake, who sat back down. The cat ears on top of her head twitched. "I suppose not for some." Yang shrugged. "But between in the city and out in the middle of nowhere with Grimm on all sides, where would you rather live?"

"It's not that bad," Ruby protested. "I only encounter Grimm every few days. Every other day, tops!"

"...lil 'sis, that is what us reasonable people would deem 'way too fucking many.' Oh, sorry."

Ruby smacked Yang across the shoulder. "No swearing."

"Ouch! I said I'm sorry."

Every few days was actually far more common than it should be, and Ruby knew it. She wasn't sure if Yang and Blake assumed she was exaggerating or if they really were aware how many Grimm were lurking around. If they _really_ knew, if _anyone_ really knew, Ruby thought they would have been doing something about it.

She couldn't help but think there was something she wasn't a part of, some secret knowledge that the adults all had they weren't sharing with her. Some knowledge that made everything make sense.

But those thoughts wouldn't help Ruby fall asleep any faster, so she put them out of her mind. Instead she thought about her sister, those were some good memories. She fell asleep in her tent remembering stories that Yang had read her.

Their journey resumed and they came up on the fortress on schedule. The weather had been mild and they had even had a few bursts of sunshine now and then. Though according to a weather report they looked up on their mobiles a storm would hit soon.

If they were lucky—or skilled—they would be able to use the fortress as shelter. As long as they cleared the Grimm out first.

They approached carefully. The forest gave way to an open meadow the fort sat inside. The meadow was likely artificial and there were a few saplings growing around the border. Given enough time the forest would reclaim this area. The fort was devoid of any human life.

"Look."

It was teeming with Grimm.

"Creepers, walkers, wolves." Ruby handed her binoculars over to Blake. "Quite a variety in there."

"Makes sense. They're using it as shelter." Blake took her turn looked at the fort. Yang was keeping watch to make sure no Grimm snuck up on them from behind. They were in the thick of it.

"So they're stealing our schtick," Ruby said.

"Technically, I think we're stealing theirs. What's the plan?"

"Uh, run in and beat them all up?"

"No." Yang said sharply, and turned back towards them. "A fort isn't like out in the forest, Ruby. You can't just flee if things get bad, there's these nasty little things called walls that get in your way. If we run in and get surrounded, we're dead."

Yang was right. Ruby let her take the reins on coming up with the plan since she had done a lot more work inside buildings than Ruby had. That being said what the plan really boiled down to was being more careful than they otherwise would be. Since they didn't have any blueprints of the fort they couldn't know what to expect.

With a crash they busted down the main door and spilled into one of the rooms. There were two wolves that jumped back at their sudden entrance. Ruby rushed forward and slashed the one on the left while Blake took out the one on the right.

"Ahh damn," Ruby said. Even though they dispatched the Grimm almost immediately, her weapon had bounced off of the wall in her follow-through. She barely held onto it.

"We're in pretty close quarters," Yang said. The fort wasn't particularly grand. It was built for the purpose of defending a position and didn't have any elaboration or decoration. That also meant the corridors were small and the ceilings were low.

Ruby retracted her scythe and shifted her grip so she could use it as a rifle. Although her specialty was sniping, when partially folded it could be used at short ranges. Accuracy was terrible though.

The left corridor was partially collapsed, so they could either go right through the outer walls of the fort, or into the center courtyard. There weren't any windows and not too many doors so the safest bet was to go straight.

The courtyard did not actually hold many Grimm. They must have been keeping indoors.

"There first," Blake said and pointed her sword at one of the buildings.

Yang punched the door down while Ruby fired a shot inside. Then they poured in, four Grimm awaiting them. Yang and Blake engaged while Ruby stayed back to fire off rounds from a distance.

"Gah!" Yang stumbled back as one of Ruby's bullets whizzed by her face. "Ruby!"

"S-Sorry."

The Grimm took advantage and rammed Yang into the wall. Ruby swung her rifle around but hesitated to pull the trigger when Blake stepped in front of her. She slashed the Grimm in two while Yang tried to recover, and Ruby aimed somewhere safer.

"Yang, are you okay?"

Yang coughed. "Y-Yeah, just a bit bruised up. Nothing's broken. Just please don't shoot me."

"Right. Sorry, again." Ruby avoided Yang's eyes and looked around the room. It looked to be the armory, though any weapons it held in the past were long gone. What was left was already broken and useless.

"We should close off the areas we clear out," Blake suggested.

The others were in agreement and blockaded off the armory. It wasn't perfect and a Grimm could easily force themselves inside, but it would probably keep off wanderers.

There were two other buildings inside the fort. They attacked them in much the same way, though Ruby was a little more conservative with her weapon. The buildings were too small to be able to make full use of her scythe, it required a lot of open space to be able to arc correctly.

Yang and Blake could pull their weight though. The last building they couldn't barricade since an entire wall was caved in, but otherwise they had cleared out the bulk of the fort. It was rather small now that they were really getting into it, and Ruby had thought it would be larger.

Similarly, there weren't as many Grimm as she thought there would be. That normally wasn't really a complaint, but Ruby had come here for the express purpose of killing as many of them as possible. If there weren't many _here,_ that just meant there were a bunch _somewhere else._

That somewhere else is where Ruby needed to be, but she didn't actually know where that was.

Blake stuck her sword into the snow and leaned on it. "Now for the wall."

"Yeah. How should we do that?" Ruby asked.

Yang pointed towards one of the doors. There were more on the inside than the outside for obvious reasons. "Blake and I will push forward while Ruby follows behind. You make sure no Grimm get behind us."

They entered through one of the doors. The rooms were narrow and they never met more than two or three Grimm at once, and even then they were small. Usually wolves or walkers or something that would go down with a single clean hit.

Ruby fired a succession of shots behind the group as a few wolves tried to box them in. The Dust-filled bullets ripped through them without any issue.

"This is pretty easy," Yang said. "Relatively speaking."

"Yeah..." Ruby brought up the rear, but besides that once nothing ever tried to sneak up on them. The Grimm were weak and didn't employ very difficult tactics. Ruby thought that whatever Grimm managed to hold the fort here would be of the stronger sort, but the reality seemed to be whatever Grimm just happened to be nearby were inside.

"Well, whatevs. I counted fourteen for me. That'll be a nice little boost but I don't think it bumps up my rank."

Ruby shrugged. "I was actually hoping that we could clear this fort out and seal it up so wandering hunters could use it as a place to hold up. But I'm not sure it's worth it."

Even though Ruby had her doubts, she had brought the tools and they didn't have anything better to do. The fort had a surrounding wall with an interior, and three buildings in the inner courtyard. Flying Grimm could easily land inside the courtyard, but the wall would keep out most of the land ones.

They had no delusions of fixing the fort back up. Instead they collapsed one of the walls completely so that they could seal off a small area. They left it with three exits and made sure to fix and secure the doors on each one. The room was large enough that a few bedrolls could be laid out to spend the night.

The three of them decided to use it that night to test it out. It was cozy and the building trapped their heat. The room seemed sturdy enough, and Ruby got out a can of spray paint.

"What are you doing?" Blake asked.

Ruby walked outside and closed the door after Blake followed her. "Tagging this as a shelter." Ruby spray painted a U-like shape on the front of the door in bright red paint. "It's to let others know they can stay here safely."

"I didn't know people did this. Is this in the handbook?"

"Naw, it's actually more of a nomadic thing." Ruby shook up the can and gave her symbol another coat. "A lot of villages rise and fall leaving a lot of people displaced. If you know what you're looking for, there's symbols all over the place. You can see them carved into trees a lot."

Ruby and Blake headed back inside, Ruby putting the can back in her pack. They ate some of their canned food for a meal and laid out their sleeping bags for the night. The clouds had gotten a bit heavier before night fell. The weather in the morning could go either way.

Ruby awoke to Yang lightly shaking her on her shoulder.

"Mmfffggg..." Ruby rolled over.

Yang shook her harder.

"Fngn... what is it..."

Yang held her mobile in front of Ruby's face. The bright screen made her squint her eyes. Scrolling across the top in a red banner read:

–– **URGENT –– URGENT –– URGENT ––**

And in the center was a short blurb:

 _Incident at Schnee Quarry North of Vale_

 _Classification: A-RANK / Grimm / Faunus_

 _Requesting all available Huntsman for security and crowd control._

Ruby shot up out of her bed. "What's going on?"

"We don't know." Yang gestured over to Blake, who was already getting dressed. "But we're only a day out."

Ruby struggled to get dressed and pack her things quickly. Blake was already ready and desperately waiting for her to hurry up. Before the sun could even breach over the horizon they were trudging through the snow towards the quarry.

Not that the sun would penetrate the thick clouds of the oncoming blizzard.


	5. Pit

_Rose Petals in the Snow_

 **Pit**

"There's an update."

Ruby held her arms in front of her face to protect herself from the blizzard. She had goggles and a scarf tied around her mouth, but the sheer force of it made her limbs ache. The blizzard started in full force and slowed the group's journey to a crawl. They would be lucky to make it to the quarry before nightfall.

"What is it?" Asked Blake. Yang tried to read what her mobile said, but the snow was getting in the way. Blake walked over to block the snow.

"The stairway collapsed," Yang said. "So they need helicopters to lift people out of the quarry."

Her phone beeped and a new message appeared.

"Helicopters can't fly because of the weather. Great."

Ruby took another step against the blizzard. They had to up their pace. The details of the incident weren't exactly, well, _detailed._ But they were still asking for everyone to help so things must still in bad shape.

Whether it was whatever Grimm were attacking or the fact that nobody was probably arriving to actually help was the question. When the weather was this bad it was rare for any hunters to be able to make the trip. Even Ruby and her gang who were only twenty miles out wouldn't arrive for an entire day, maybe two.

Hunters stationed in Vale could probably take a train, but even in the blizzard it would have to go slower than usual to stay safe. No matter how many Grimm were at the quarry, nobody was coming to help in any reasonable amount of time.

"We have to hurry," Blake said.

"I'd love to."

The blizzard carried on well past noon before it finally let up to the degree they could see more than five feet in front of them. According to the GPS they were still miles away from the mine. Night fell before they made it. The terrain started to incline though and the trees fell away, which meant they were close.

That being said, it was nearing midnight before they arrived. Snow still fell and they had to push through a few feet to advance.

"Here you guys." Ruby handed Blake and Yang each a packet. "This is instant-heated ultra-strength coffee. Pull this tab here and a small dust reaction goes off, heating it instantly. It's super clever."

They each took the packet.

"Blech," Yang coughed. "This tastes terrible."

Ruby laughed. "It'll work though."

Not to long later, they finally came upon the quarry. It was well-lit, sturdy lamp posts surrounding the entire quarry along with a steel fence. Although that well-litness only illuminated exactly what was going on.

Grimm everywhere. It wasn't a "group" or even a "swarm." It was like an army. Grimm of all types were there, but most common were wolves. There were a few small ones but a whole lot of big ones.

Ruby was silent.

"H-Holy sh—cow."

There didn't seem to be anybody fighting the Grimm, they were just shuffling around the border of the quarry. Ruby could see where there used to be an elevator down into the pit but it was busted. Inside the quarry itself there were plenty of people. They seemed to be attempting to fend off a couple of Grimm who had leaped in but it was hard to see.

"What do we do?" Asked Yang. Blake seemed ready to just run in and start killing things, but even the sheer number of them held back her fury.

"I don't see anyone running the show." Ruby brought out her binoculars and tried to look around. "Inside I see hunters fighting off some Grimm. Not many."

A couple of the wolves jumped over the barrier of the quarry and slid down inside. Some of them tumbled and died before they made it, but a few survived and joined the attack at the base. The sides were inclined—sharply, but it wasn't perfectly straight.

"We have to help them," Blake insisted.

Ruby nodded.

But that was it. She kept looking with the binoculars while Blake and Yang got antsy. She couldn't find what she was looking for though, and eventually put the binoculars away and extended her scythe.

"See that spot?" Ruby pointed to a spot on the edge of the quarry. "You guys can control your descent if you jump in there. I'll clear the Grimm out, you guys leap as soon as you get the chance."

"Sis," Yang said sharply. "We're not leaving you up here by yourself."

Ruby looked back and smiled. "I'm not sacrificing myself or anything, I'll jump down after you."

Everyone checked their equipment, and Ruby took a deep breath before rushing forwards.

Quite a lot of Grimm turned towards her after she started firing shot after shot into them as she charged. The Grimm turned on her and leaped. Wolves tried to bite her, walkers tried to claw her, and all manner of Grimm she didn't even have names for began to approach.

Her scythe arced through the air, slicing any that came close to her. Perhaps in buildings or in thick forests she wasn't as effective. Perhaps against other hunters she couldn't win a fight. Perhaps if her weapon was even a bit off than she was used to her skill dropped.

Three wolves tried to attack her at once. She sliced the one in front of her and stepped forward, firing a shot at the second one at the end of her follow through. The momentum pushed the scythe to slash through the third, all in less than two seconds.

Perhaps all those things were true, but when she was out in the open like this and when her weapon was in top form and when her reflexes were fueled by adrenaline and industrial-strength coffee? When Ruby was in her element it didn't matter how many Grimm attacked her.

Especially wolves.

Ten Grimm in succession fell before Ruby's blade.

"Now!"

Blake and Yang rushed out, taking advantage of the brief lapse in combat. The other Grimm had backed off a bit to reassess their situation. A lot of the time they fought like feral beasts, but they were known to organize on occasion.

This had turned into one of those occasions.

They tried to attack Yang and Blake as they ran past, but both of them could handle themselves. They easily made their way past to the railing and didn't hesitate to leap over. They slid down the canyon.

Ruby dropped the clip out of her weapon and stuck a new one in before reaffirming her grip.

"Sorry, Yang." She whispered to herself.

And she rushed forward, slashing through Grimm.

During the fort, Yang had counted how many Grimm she had taken out. She was probably doing the same now. Ruby, however, never kept track. One reason for this was that she honestly didn't really care, which is why she registered as unlisted.

Another reason was there was so much she was keeping track of already.

An eagle dived down. The weather had let up enough to allow helicopters to fly, but that also brought airborne Grimm back into the equation. Ruby hooked a wolf under her scythe and rolled it into the air, colliding it with the bird. She followed up with a shot from her rifle and eliminated them both.

The trajectory, the timing to get it just right. It had to be precise, Ruby had to be completely focused on the task at hand. She couldn't distract herself with the number she had killed.

A loud explosion knocked Ruby off her feet. It dislodged a bunch of Grimm too, but the birds took the opportunity to attack. She didn't have time to wonder what caused the explosion, she had to roll over and arc her scythe in the air. She missed the birds, but they retreated from the attack. It gave Ruby the second she needed to get back on her feet.

She spared a quick glance towards the source of the noise while she slashed an arc. A wolf got caught up in it, and Ruby fired into its neck to kill it.

Then Ruby planted her feet as she saw a train car rolling towards the edge of the quarry. Longways over itself like a log. It plowed into a lot of Grimm and knocked them into the quarry along with the train car itself.

"Yes!" Came a shout in the distance. Ruby fought her way towards the voice, rushing through Grimm.

She ran a bit away from the group of Grimm but they were quick to pursue. There was a small hill, the other side of which Ruby found a somewhat familiar face. Weiss looked up at Ruby.

"Hey, you're—"

"What are you doing?" Ruby shouted. "You just tossed a train car into the mine."

"It's called _strategy,_ not that I would expect you to understand."

"There's people down there!"

"There's _Faunus_ down there."

"That's—" Before Ruby could retort, the Grimm chasing her caught up. She spun around.

"W-W-Why did you lead them up here? You idiot," Weiss shouted.

Ruby readied her scythe, and jumped back into the fray. She made sure to engage as many as she could, even if she didn't hit any kill shots. Organization or not, Grimm were easy to grab the attention of. Ruby led all the Grimm away from Weiss.

She could probably handle herself though.

"Where are you going?" She shouted, but her complaints were already lost in the noise of combat. Ruby wasn't sure if Weiss would try something again like with the train, but she'd have to be prepared. Ruby was actively trying to keep the Grimm _out of_ the pit, not inside.

She dropped an empty clip out of her scythe and kicked it towards the nearest Grimm. It flinched from the impact, and then it died from the blade that cleaved through its skull.

Another explosion-like sound echoed, and Ruby saw a magic-circle-like illusion appear. It knocked one of the wolves into the air, towards the quarry.

Ruby swung her rifle around and shot it out of the sky. It still fell into the pit, but it was already dead.

"Will you stop that," Ruby shouted. She completed the arc of her scythe but missed any Grimm. Cleaning up Weiss's attack wasn't part of her regular attack pattern.

"What are you..." Weiss trailed off, and Ruby saw her just standing there out of the corner of her eye.

Suddenly, the Grimm attacking Ruby backed off. She knelt low and leveled her scythe. She wasn't sure what they would try next.

A loud howl echoed throughout the entire canyon, down into the quarry and through the plains. Ruby spun around trying to find the source but it was coming from all directions.

The ocean of Grimm parted to let a massive creature walk towards Ruby and Weiss. It was like a wolf, but huge. Its fangs were long, its claws were sharp and it towered above them like a skyscraper.

"What the hell is that?" Weiss shouted.

"The wolf," Ruby said.

"What wolf?" Weiss stared at it as it stomped closer. "Wait, you don't mean the Fenrir-class—that's just a legend."

"Legend or not it's right there." Ruby smiled and bared her own teeth, even though they weren't nearly as sharp. "The big bad wolf."

"We—"

"Don't even think about throwing it into the pit."

Before the conversation could continue, Ruby planted her scythe and unloaded as many shots as she could into the wolf. It charged forward shaking off the hits as if they weren't even there. Ruby pulled her scythe once the wolf got in range and slashed at it as it drove past.

It didn't even feel like her scythe was cutting flesh. The blade didn't bounce off thick armor or anything, it was just like cutting through mud. Completely useless.

The wolf howled and slashed it's claw at Ruby. She met its paw with a swing of her blade but that only succeeded in throwing her backwards.

The wolf advanced far quicker than Ruby would have thought given its large size and opened its maw. She dodged to the side avoiding its fangs, but was caught by its claw. It wrapped around her and grabbed her like a doll.

Ruby squirmed in its grasp but couldn't do anything, her scythe trapped in the grasp with her.

Glyphs appeared next to her and icicles shot out of them, stabbing the wolf through the arm. It flinched and let Ruby go. She fell onto the ground, but quickly recovered as the wolf retreated.

It simply shook its arm and the icicles fell out. It didn't seem worse for wear. Weiss stepped up next to Ruby, brandishing her rapier.

"Flank it on the left."

Ruby nodded. More glyphs appeared around the wolf while Ruby darted around the side. She emptied her clip into the wolf's head while Weiss distracted it with icicle attacks. But while Ruby reloaded, the wolf charged at Weiss.

There wasn't time to reload, Ruby darted forward and intercepted the wolf. She slashed at its front paw with her scythe. Not to do damage, she tried to trip it.

The wolf kept its balance but had to shift its weight, giving Weiss the opening to dodge.

Ruby's fighting style didn't give her time to think, she had to plan all of her moves perfectly ahead of time. But with Weiss here and actually helping, she was surprised how effective they were together. Back at the fort Yang and Blake had honestly mostly just gotten in her way. Or vice versa.

"Attack its legs," Ruby shouted and popped another clip back into her rifle.

Weiss must have heard her, because icicles started piercing the legs. Ruby fired shots into the legs while the wolf flailed around. They had to jump back to avoid its strikes.

The wolf broke its routine and swept its tail at Ruby. She hadn't seen it coming and it hit her square in the side, throwing her into the air. Half a second later and she realized she was flying right into the quarry.

A glyph appeared in her path. Ruby inelegantly fell into it, and it immediately reversed her trajectory. She was rotating too much to be able to land on her feet, but she tucked her legs in and crashed into the snow in a roll.

The claw of the wolf was coming down on her when she came to a stop. She held up her arms to brace for the impact, but it never came. Another glyph appeared between the claw and Ruby, stopping it mid-air.

Ruby rolled out from under it and fired a few shots into the wolf's neck as she backed away.

"Thank you," Ruby shouted to the air. She didn't actually know where Weiss was though.

She kept firing shots while retreating back. Despite the sheer amount of damage they were pumping into the thing it just wasn't going down. It didn't even look like it really noticed.

Ruby found Weiss a short distance away. They directed their attacks to get close to each other.

"This isn't working," Weiss said. "It's not slowing at all."

"Have a better idea?" Ruby leveled her scythe, the wolf was charging again.

"We should retreat and wait for reinforcements."

The wolf slashed at them both, but they dodged. Weiss used her glyphs to hop in the air while Ruby darted to the side, firing the last shot out of her clip while doing so. She reloaded by the time she stopped and changed direction, but she didn't have an unlimited supply.

Weiss was right, this wasn't working.

"Five minutes," Weiss shouted as loud as she could. "Hold it for five minutes."

Ruby gripped her scythe tightly. Five minutes was a long time. She didn't know what Weiss was planning or what would happen in five minutes, but Weiss was confident in it.

Fighting for that long would require a different strategy. A more conservative one. The wolf didn't let up its attacks, but Ruby and Weiss kept their distance more.

This put them in range of the weaker Grimm who gladly took advantage of the opportunity. Ruby suddenly had to manage fighting the weaker ones while the big wolf also attacked.

This proved a bit too much.

"Arg!" Ruby had to leap in the air to dodge one of the smaller wolves. It was a move she had done plenty, but there were too many enemies to keep track of. She was knocked in the side again when a claw slashed at her abdomen.

Ruby was thrown into the snow and a trail of blood stained her path.

Glyphs appeared in mass number around her, firing all manner of projectiles towards the wolves.

She stood up, grasping her side. Weiss's assault gave her a brief moment to check her wounds. She had a nasty-looking gash, probably the worst she had ever received. Ruby wasn't sure she could keep on fighting any longer.

Ruby retreated while Weiss covered her, though there wasn't really anywhere to go.

An air raid siren suddenly boomed across the entire area.

"That's it," Weiss shouted. "Run away as fast as you can."

"Why?"

"Just do it!"

Weiss generated another huge barrage of glyphs, pushing the wolf as far away from them as she could while they ran over a snowbank. Ruby held onto her side to stop the bleeding as best she could.

A beating sound started to echo in conjunction with the air raid siren and from the clouds three helicopters appeared. They weren't the sort of regular helicopters Ruby was used to, they looked a lot more dangerous.

"Atlas Gunships," Weiss explained.

Ruby stared at the gunships as they approached. The wolf turned to look at them as well.

Then it got loud.

The sound of a thousand explosions all at once drowned out every other noise in the entire canyon. More missiles than Ruby could count all flew towards the wolf and surrounding grim. As they hit a massive explosion of color flooded the entire area. Ruby and Weiss were thrown to the ground from the impact.

Clouds of dust and snow blocked Ruby's vision. Weiss used some glyph to clear it away quickly, and where there once was an army of Grimm there were only corpses.

But the big bad wolf was still standing. It looked to be ripped in half, missing one of its limbs and falling apart. But it was alive.

It turned tail and bolted away, leaping over Ruby and Weiss and running off into the fog.

The gunships circled around and unloaded more missiles into the remaining Grimm until the entire area was swept clean.

They landed after that, and two or three people got out of each one. Weiss and Ruby caught someone's attention.

"I need first aid," Ruby said.

Somebody rushed over with a red bag with a cross on it and started to look Ruby over. He ripped her shirt open to get a look at the injury and applied some sort of chemical to it. Ruby didn't recognize it, she only knew the very basics of medicine. What's required to live outside the city.

"You'll live," the man said. "But it would be best to air lift you to a hospital for a few days. The transports are en route already so just sit tight for a moment."

Ruby nodded and waited for the helicopter to arrive.

Weiss waited with her.


	6. Quartet

_Rose Petals in the Snow_

 **Quartet**

Ruby silently peeled her apple with the dull peeler the nurse had given her. She wasn't sure if the hospital just didn't have any high quality tools, or if it was dull for an explicit reason. It made the task harder than it ought to have been, but not completely impossible.

"Hmm hmm hmm~" Ruby hummed to herself. Scraps of the apple skin fell onto the plate in her lap. With a proper knife she thought she would have been able to have one continuous peel coil, but with her current tool she had already failed.

"The peel is good for you, you know."

Ruby looked up to see Weiss standing in the doorway of the hospital. It had been a few days since the debacle at the mine but after she was airlifted out she didn't have any idea what was happening. Her injury was, according to the doctors, mostly superficial. As long as she didn't get an infection she would be fine.

It would hurt for awhile though.

"It's a Red Delicious," Ruby said. "The skins taste terrible."

"That doesn't refute what I said." Weiss walked over and sat down next to Ruby's bed. She just sat there for a moment and Ruby was left to wonder why she was even here. They fought together back at the quarry but that was over and done with.

Ruby finished peeling her apple and took the similarly-dull knife off her side-table to slice it up.

"That Grimm that we fought escaped," Weiss said.

"I figured."

"I'm going to go after it. It attacked my family's assets so on my honor as a Schnee I'm going to take it out."

Ruby shook her head. "It'll kill you."

"Not if I have a team." Weiss crossed her arms. "You were a lot more swift out there than you demonstrated in the tournament. I didn't really understand how you could improve in such short time, so I asked Goodwitch about you."

Ruby popped one of the apple slices into her mouth.

"She let me see your footage."

"I dfng—" Ruby paused and swallowed. "I didn't know anybody could view those."

"I was persuasive, but that's besides the point." Weiss crossed her arms. "I don't understand you at all. Your kill count is big enough to put you in the top five in the rankings even without any missions completed, but you have yourself as unlisted. It would take no effort at all to change it so why don't you?"

Ruby shrugged and held out her plate. "I never saw the point. Want an apple slice?"

"The _point_ is that the public wants to see the Huntsman's Guild being effective. The public needs heroes who are defending against the Grimm and keeping order in the cities and towns. You've killed a lot of Grimm—I shouldn't need to explain why this has to be. If the people stay hopeful and optimistic then the threat of Grimm diminishes."

Weiss hadn't taken a slice, so Ruby brought the plate back. She didn't eat any though and looked down at them in silent contemplation. Ruby hadn't actually thought of it in that way. The reality of the situation seemed to be people like Weiss who were just in it for the fame and glory. A selfish desire that got in the way of actual defending.

But she had a point.

"But you know, Weiss..." Ruby closed her eyes. "Happy thoughts only go so far. And it's getting harder and harder to adhere to that."

"Hence the team to take out the Fenrir class. I want you on it."

"I—"

Before she could reply, the door to her room slammed open. A real solid slam too. One of the hinges probably fell off or at least loosened. Ruby only knew one person who could barge down doors like that.

" _Ruby!"_ Yang shouted, stomping over to Ruby's bed.

She slapped her right across the face.

It hurt.

Ruby rubbed her cheek. "O-Oww..."

Yang came in for the hug next and held Ruby tightly. Enough that her injury started to hurt despite the medication and painkillers she was on.

"Why the hell did you do that Ruby? You said you were goin' to be down right after us."

"Sorry."

"Do you know how worried I was? I know you're strong but you can't try to take that on by yourself."

"Sorry."

Yang released Ruby from her grip and stepped back, leaning against the wall. She sighed when Ruby just smiled at her and offered an apple slice. Yang took it and popped it into her mouth.

"I should go," Weiss said and stood up.

"Wait," Ruby said. Weiss looked back at her. "If you're going after the wolf, I'll come with."

Yang sighed. "Oh Ruby."

Weiss nodded and exchanged information with Ruby before heading out. Just Ruby and Yang were left in the room. They ate through the rest of Ruby's apple while discussing exactly what happened at the quarry. Ruby described what she and Weiss dealt with while Yang described her and Blake's role below.

Apparently the situation had been rather grim. The hunters down in the quarry hadn't done a particularly good job of actually defending the Faunus "workers," and had just been running around killing Grimm where they could. A number of innocent Faunus had been hurt.

After the air raid the Grimm had been rid of, but it still took days to get the trapped miners out and safe. Few supplies had been sent down and Blake was absolutely furious about it.

"I see," Ruby said.

But in the end everything had been handled. Nobody had died at least. Ruby was surprised, given the situation.

Yang left Ruby to recover though she visited repeatedly throughout Ruby's stay. By the week's end she was discharged with instructions on how to care for her mostly-healed wound. Her armor had taken the brunt of the hit really and the damage was mostly it scraping along her skin.

She received an email from Weiss to meet up at a popular and over-Ruby's-budget cafe. Ruby wasn't even close to prepared to go back out into the wild—she had exhausted the majority of her Dust and needed new armor and clothing. But she could at least meet Weiss and see what the plan was.

The cafe they met at was right on the main street of Vale. The streets were clear of the snow and a lot of people were walking around. Inside the cafe itself was similarly crowded, though Ruby easily found Weiss at one of the booths. Sitting with her was both Yang and Blake.

"Uh, hi everyone." Ruby said and sat down in the only spot left next to Weiss. "Why are you here?"

"Nice greeting, sis."

"This, through no real desire of my own," Weiss started. "Is the team. Those two mostly forced themselves onto it."

"I'm not thrilled either," Blake responded.

"Oh." Ruby actually smiled. "Well, okay then."

A waitress came by and took their orders. Weiss ordered a plate of snacks for everybody and coffee or tea. Ruby noticed that she and Weiss took their coffee the same way, but they sat in relative silence until the waitress came back with their order. Ruby was glad Weiss agreed to pay since there was no way that she could afford much on her own.

"Anyways, we need to register as a team with the guild. So we need a name," Weiss said. "Traditionally people just take the first four letters of everyone's name, stick them together and pronounce it as if it had vowels. I was thinking W-Y-B-R, pronounced 'Wiber.'"

Yang shook her head. "That sounds weird."

Weiss sipped her coffee. "You have a better idea?"

Yang didn't, but Blake took out a piece of paper and pencil and started to write down different rearrangements of the letters W, Y, B and R. Yang and Weiss hunched over looking at the different spellings. Ruby sat back and enjoyed her coffee. The cafe was kept warm but it still felt nice to drink the hot cup and watch the snow fall outside.

"How about Ruby?"

Ruby looked back. "How about me what?"

Everyone looked at her like she had egg on her face. "Our team name," Blake said.

"What happened to the four letters thing?"

Blake held up the piece of paper and circled one of the anagrams. R-W-B-Y.

"Ruby."

"Ugg." Weiss looked disgusted. "That plays way too well not to do it."

That was the end of that discussion. Ruby didn't really mind, though she thought it was clever. Weiss was the leader of the team so it would probably be a confusing name.

Well, it was just a name.

They discussed the plan and made a date to start their tracking of the wolf. Weiss said she had some high tech equipment to assist with the hunt and they partitioned off a map of the area around the quarry to try to reason where it would flee to.

Two days later after everyone had purchased all the equipment they would need, they met at the train station and prepared to hunt a wolf. They would take the train over to the quarry first and go from there.

"All aboard," Ruby shouted from the train car.

This time the train stayed on the tracks the whole ride. Blake didn't seem at all perturbed about being on a train again after what she had done the previous time. Ruby wondered if she was good at hiding it or if she really didn't care.

The train came to a stop at the quarry. It was a short train and didn't seem to have much on it besides Ruby and her companions. It was entirely possible Weiss forced it to run just for them, but if she did she didn't say it.

Regardless she was no less prepared than anyone else to face the wilderness as they stepped out of the train car and made their way over to what was previously a battleground. They looked in the direction where the wolf had ran, and made their way.

"How does this work?" Blake asked. "Hunting a specific Grimm?"

"It's big," Ruby said quickly. "Powerful Grimm leave types of trails that are easier to identify with equipment like Weiss has. Also the smaller Grimm tend to follow them, so you can usually tell by their movements. Along with normal tracking methods for animals."

Weiss nodded and brought up something from her bag. It was a small little device that looked similar to a phone. Ruby didn't know how to use them, but Weiss looked to understand it. In the end they had a general direction to walk in, and before long they ended up in the forest.

It was pretty thick and they had to really push their way through it. Weiss at one point even pulled out her sword and started chopping her way through the forest. Rather than pull out their own weapons the rest of them just followed behind Weiss.

"This is terrible," she complained as she chopped down another branch. "Humans weren't meant to deal with this sort of thing."

"Well, we sort of were." Ruby said.

"How so?"

Ruby prodded Weiss to turn around and held a leaf close up in front of her face. "Look over at Yang. You can see her just fine, right? Despite this leaf in front of your face?"

Weiss nodded.

"Our eyes are both on the front of our head to let us see better in cluttered places like forests. So we're actually pretty good at surviving in them."

"Huh."

"Rubes has a lot of knowledge like that," Yang said from the back of their little conga line through the forest. "No idea where she gets it all from."

The forest remained unrelenting as ever, and they had to clear out a section before they could make camp. Weiss had some sort of fancy tent while the rest of them had standard stuff, but in the end they all did the same thing.

Their tracking had good days and bad days, but it ended up turning into something that wouldn't be completed by the week's end. Even with all the methods they had, tracking Grimm wasn't something perfected. They took a lot of wrong turns and followed false leads.

Which isn't to say they weren't making progress. And even if they didn't find the wolf, the four of them had already slain plenty of Grimm they just encountered naturally. It was already a net gain.

"How's your injury, Rubes?"

"It kinda hurts and the painkillers mess with my reaction time."

Yang put a hand on Ruby's shoulder. "Take it easy, alright?"

She laughed. "You know why we're out here, right?"

"Still."

Ruby nodded.

It was a day later when they finally tracked the wolf properly. They had exited the forest and entered the cliffs just barely when they came across a cave. The entrance was large and easily visible, though almost pitch black inside. The sun just didn't seem to reach far into it.

"Is it really in there?" Blake asked. "Do wolves hold up in caves?"

"We injured it fairly seriously," Weiss said. "It's been awhile but it's probably still recovering. Large Grimm take a long time to recover when seriously injured so they find places like this that are easily defensible."

They looked at the cave for awhile before mustering up the courage to actually enter it. Staying out in the open was one thing, and even in a forest there were many places to escape to in an emergency. But in a cave the escape routes were severely limited. And also very easy to get surrounded.

Weiss flicked on her flashlight, followed by Ruby and the others. Weiss took the lead and Yang brought up the rear.

It didn't take long for them to reach a fork in the cave.

"Two hundred twenty meters," Ruby said.

"You counted?"

Ruby nodded. "I keep track of a lot of numbers. We should mark our path too though just in case."

They agreed and marked the fork in the road appropriately. Ruby painted a big florescent arrow in spray paint pointing towards the exit. Then she carved a line down the tunnel they decided to go down.

"More of your homeless signals?" Blake asked. Ruby shook her head.

"Just common sense. In case we need to get out of here quickly, big glowing arrows. And a simple line to mark where we've been. If we backtrack we'll draw another line and make an 'X' for "dead end."

They navigated their way through the cave, marking it in this way. They didn't encounter any Grimm but Weiss's instruments were going wild, so they knew something big was down here.

While walking through the depths they discussed their tactics for how they would fight the wolf. It would be different than fighting out in the open, especially for Ruby. She would have to focus on the firearm aspect rather than the scythe aspect.

"Shh," Weiss said, interrupting the conversation.

They all halted and listened. They could hear movement coming from down the cavern. Blake and Yang stepped out front while Ruby and Weiss stepped back, and slowly in formation they inched forward.

"Alright," Weiss whispered. "I'm going to light it up."

The three of them nodded. Weiss made a gesture with her hand, and a hundred runes ran down the wall into the darkness bathing the cavern in a soft blue light. A hundred or so meters down the way they saw the wolf. The wolf recoiled in the light and faced the four of them.

There was a pause.

And then Blake and Yang charged. The corridor was narrow and just barely fit the full size of the wolf. The wolf must have recovered plenty because it took its attackers head-on.

"Ready for this Blake?" Yang shouted, punching her fists together. Blake nodded and gripped her sword.

They clashed in a flurry of blows. The wolf slashed at them while Blake and Yang returned the favor. The wolf didn't have much room to maneuver, but Blake and Yang had about ten feet above them to deal with.

Ruby formed her weapon into its scythe form and stuck it into the ground to use like a turret. Even the hard dirt of the cave succumbed to the blade and she got it nice and stuck. The barrel of the gun faced towards the wolf.

"I'm trusting you with this one Weiss."

"Leave it to me."

Ruby inhaled and pulled the trigger, pumped the bolt and fired again as fast as she could. The Dust cartridges shot towards the melee ahead.

Glyphs appeared in the air in front of the wolf, Blake and Yang. The bullets passed through the glyphs and drifted their trajectory, missing Blake and Yang completely while plummeting right into the wolf.

"Yang left up!" Blake shouted. Trusting her partner, Yang leaped into the upper left towards the wolf. There was an opening and Yang shot through onto the other side.

The wolf was now surrounded.

Ruby dropped the magazine out of her gun and put in a new one—a different one.

"High impact rounds loaded," Ruby shouted. Weiss nodded and the glyphs in the air changed colors.

"Fire when ready."

Ruby let loose and dozens of rounds plowed into the wolf doing serious damage this time. With only Blake between them they didn't have to be as accurate.

The wolf kept trying to slash and bite at Blake and Yang but the wolf was the one at the disadvantage here. Eventually it realized who exactly was dealing the most damage though and changed its tactics. It had one thing over on them, and that was its size and momentum.

Despite Blake standing in its way, the wolf just pushed past her. She got a clean hit to its leg but was knocked down in the process. The wolf just ignored this and charged right towards Ruby and Weiss.

Ruby pulled her gun emplacement and Weiss stepped out front.

"You better not shoot me," Weiss yelled and drew her sword. Yang and Blake were following up behind the wolf, Ruby retreating to put distance between it.

When the wolf got close to Weiss, a multi-tiered glyph appeared between them. The wolf crashed into it and they all shattered. It slowed the wolf enough for Weiss to make her own attack with her sword.

Even though she hadn't used all her rounds Ruby dropped the high-impact magazine anyways and put something she could be more accurate with.

Blake and Yang caught up, wailing on the wolf from behind. It was tough and the amount of Dust they were eating through could probably put a student through college. But it was working.

"It's struggling," Ruby shouted. "It'll try to escape soon."

It would either try to go through her and Weiss or Blake and Yang. Ruby kept firing shots but her rate went down since she had to aim without the assist of Weiss's glyphs.

Whatever the reasoning was for the wolf, it chose Blake and Yang. It spun around suddenly, its tail catching Weiss and throwing her back. Ruby had to quickly let go of the trigger before she fired to avoid shooting her.

The wolf charged through Yang and Blake who both went for its legs. The wolf tripped but quickly pulled itself up and started to run again.

Weiss held out her hand and threw more glyphs into its path. It had to break through them to get by slowing it enough for Yang and Blake to catch up and hit it.

Blake was the one to cleave through its head.

And so she slew the beast.

The four of them just stood there for a moment, trying to figure out if they just did what they think they did.

"Wohoo!" Yang shouted. "We kicked its ass."

Blake smiled and even Weiss nodded.

"I'm surprised how well we work together to be honest," Weiss said. "That couldn't have gone better."

Ruby smiled and put her hand to her stomach. When she pulled it back to look at it, it had blood on it.


	7. Trio

_Rose Petals in the Snow_

 **Trio**

"That should do it," Yang said.

Ruby looked down to see the bandage Yang had wrapped around her stomach. Her wound had opened up again but it wasn't that bad. She hadn't been injured by the wolf again and she was far too happy to really mind a little blood.

Yang berated her for this and told her to watch her health more closely.

"There's a town a few miles from here," Ruby said. "I guess we can rest there for a little while."

They agreed this was the best idea and Ruby led the way. The town was a small little village between the forest and the cliffs. There was this nice little flat area they built it on.

Though when they reached the area Ruby remembered the town being on, it wasn't there.

"Oh no," Ruby said.

They could see the remnants of what was once a town. There were house foundations partially covered by the snow and the torn-down framework of a building here and there. But the town was almost entirely off the map.

"Looks like they had to move," Blake said looking around. "Most of this looks deconstructed, not destroyed."

Ruby sighed in relief. "Still though, that they had to move in the first place is sad."

It wasn't quite the comfort they had wanted, but they found a mostly-intact building and decided to spend the night in it. They re-purposed one of their tents to cover a hole in the roof and it made a cozy little place.

This happened more often than Ruby would have liked. Towns had to stay migratory to survive the Grimm. Large cities like Vale with large walls could stay fixed—Grimm couldn't penetrate the wall or the guards that man them. But a sleepy little town couldn't. They relied on hunters coming by regularly to ward off Grimm, but unfortunately there weren't enough hunters to do that.

And most didn't venture out of the city all that much anyways.

"So we'll head back to Vale next." Weiss said.

"Why?"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "To report our victory."

"I meant why do we have to do that _next?_ " Ruby gestured towards her bags. "I have the supplies and Dust for another month or two, depending on how many Grimm we encounter. Let's keep going."

Yang sighed. "Come on Ruby, I told you to take it easy."

"So we'll wait a day."

"I agree with Ruby," Blake said.

"Of course you do."

Weiss sighed. "Let's just discuss it in the morning and get some sleep."

They left a fire burning in the fireplace and each found their own corner to sleep in. Ruby put her bedroll right next to Yang's while Weiss and Blake placed theirs farther off. The building would keep out the cold well enough as long as a blizzard didn't strike overnight. And luckily it didn't.

It struck in the morning.

"Guess we're not going back to Vale, huh?" Ruby said with a too-smug look on her face.

"We're also not doing anything else, so let's just rest in here today." Yang said. "I bet we could find the supplies to fix this house up a little bit."

Ruby was going to offer to help before Yang shot her down and told her she'd be watching today. It was boring but at the very least she could provide input as the others tried to fix up the little house. Even though there wasn't much of the village left Yang managed to find some materials.

"Patch up the higher parts first," Ruby offered.

"Mmhmm." Yang looked up at the hole in the ceiling.

Weiss pointed towards the planks Yang had dragged in. "Criss-cross that shorter one."

They got to work while Ruby watched. There was a large hole in the ceiling that they patched up first before moving to some of the smaller cracks. It was by no means a very secure place and Ruby didn't even really consider marking it like she did the fort. This little hobble would likely fall apart in a few weeks without any repair.

Blake walked in while they were doing this and sat down next to Ruby, opening a book. It was tattered and somewhat water-damaged. Ruby sneaked a peek to see the pages were hand-written.

"What's that?"

Blake held it out for Ruby to see better.

–––––

 _Dear Diary,_

 _Today me and Sammy went to go play over by the glade. There was this big old deer there but it didn't get afraid when we got close and we could even brush its fur! It was so fun. But then it darted away and I fell down and got mud all over my new dress. Mommy was so angry!_

–––––

"You have a diary?"

Blake shook her head. "I found it in the snow."

Ruby would have said something about reading other people's diaries, but it was a bit of a special circumstance. Instead she just watched Blake read the diary for a bit. Within the hour the house was as fixed up as they cared to get it.

They had started a fire in the center of the room, letting the smoke escape through a small hole in the ceiling. It kept it nice and warm compared to the blizzard roaring just outside.

"Anybody want some hot chocolate?" Ruby asked. She dug through her bag and showed the others some instant-cocoa packets. Even Weiss let out a snicker and took one of the packets. They boiled a pot of water over the fire and before long each had a nice hot mug of cocoa.

Weiss sipped her drink. "Mmm. Even though this tastes terrible it really hits the spot for some reason."

They laughed.

The blizzard died down around midday though the sun never managed to peek its head through the clouds. There wasn't much to do except talk, but they quickly got bored of that. Blake had spent most of the day reading that diary.

"Hey Blake," Ruby said. Blake looked up. "Does that diary say anything about where the villagers decided to go?"

Blake flipped towards the end and thumbed through the pages. Ruby watched her skim them for a minute or two, her ears twitching all the while. If she wanted Blake easily could obscure her Faunus nature with a large hat, so Ruby wondered why she didn't. It was probably something she wouldn't ever truly understand.

"Here's something," Blake said. "It says they're headed towards Falkirk Village. Ever hear of it?"

"About ten days away." Ruby stared at the diary. "Maybe... well, do you want to return it?"

Ruby had kept a diary once. It had been really comforting at a difficult time in her childhood. Just writing down her feelings, or even just what happened during the day, was lethargic. This little girl was probably terrified without her own.

Blake closed the diary. "I do."

Weiss and Yang both sighed and rolled their eyes. But Yang didn't protest the situation and Weiss bowed to the majority. So once they had gathered their things, they set out towards Falkirk village.

–––––

 _Dear diary,_

 _I scraped my knee today, it really hurt! I cried and everything, but mommy told me I shouldn't cry. I should be happy that I get to experience the world and feel things, even if they hurt. She said that as long as I keep my spirits up, the big bad Grimm won't come. Then she gave me some ice cream!_

 _I think I can hear mommy crying through the wall though. I hope she feels better._

–––––

Team RWBY had traveled for two days without incident before coming across a river in their path. Ruby didn't know the area all that well but she was pretty sure that there wasn't a river here earlier. It wasn't particularly wide or fast, but the water would be extremely cold.

"Now what?" Yang asked.

Before they thought of a strategy to cross they refilled their canteens with the fresh water. Weiss asked if it was safe to drink, and though Ruby didn't really _know_ she told Weiss that she was going to drink it, and then drank some of it right in front of her. Though if Weiss really was worried she could just boil it.

"It's only what, twenty or thirty meters across?" Weiss said. "I could easily propel everyone over with a bounce glyph. Though if there's a method that doesn't use up our Dust I'm all ears."

Ruby checked the most recently updated map on her mobile while Blake and Yang tossed ideas back and fourth. She had been right—there _wasn't_ supposed to be a river here. The map had it bend a few miles up north and continue westward. Had somebody built a dam or something? Ruby didn't think anyone had settled near here.

If they had though there might be a bridge. But it probably wasn't worth it to try to find it.

Weiss sighed when no other feasible options were suggested, and agreed to just bounce everyone across. She certainly had an interesting fighting style, Ruby thought that it almost seemed to work like magic. Glyph theory of manipulating Dust was just as well understood as anything else, but it was definitely one of the most impressive uses.

As evidenced by Weiss easily launching them over the river. The landing wasn't quite so easy, but all four of them easily landed it. It was easier to pull trickier maneuvers like that when one wasn't in the heat of combat.

–––––

 _Dear diary,_

 _The village elder people had a meeting today. None of us kids were invited but we could tell that it was something super serious. Luckily Damian eavesdropped on them though and told us what happened. They said that we might have to move soon! The bad Grimm monsters are attacking too often and I guess we're running out of food or something._

 _I'm really scared, but mommy says everything is going to be okay._

–––––

"Rubes... listen."

Yang stopped marching and gestured for the group to stop with her. They had just hit a road, though it wasn't one they could follow. It was perpendicular to the direction that they needed to travel.

"What's up, Yang?"

Yang pointed towards one direction the road traveled. "Vale is only about two days in that direction. I know that we're a little more than halfway to Falkirk but, well. Sorry." Yang scratched her neck and shrugged. "I'm really more of a city girl, you know?"

"Aww, you're leaving?"

"Like I said, sorry."

Ruby dashed over and gave Yang a big hug. It had enough force behind it that they almost fell over into the snow. Yang laughed and returned it, though through their thick winter coats it wasn't much of an intimate gesture.

"It was really fun, sis." Ruby said.

"Yeah. Take care of yourself."

The four of them set down everything for a moment to regroup and reorganize their supplies. Most importantly they transferred the camera data of their mission to kill the Fenrir Grimm to Yang's mobile so she could report it to the guild.

After that, Yang said her goodbyes to Blake and Weiss before giving Ruby one last ruffle in her hair.

"Hope you find what you're looking for," she said.

Ruby had a feeling she wasn't talking about the diary owner.

–––––

 _Dear diary,_

 _Half of the village is gone. The adults said that they're tearing it down so we can go live somewhere else. But I don't want to live somewhere else, I like it here! They say that there's lots of Grimm around but I've never seen any! I want to go play in the glade again, or go swim in the river. Well, maybe not the river because it's really cold right now but you know what I mean diary._

 _Mommy's been trying to tell me that our new home will be really fun too, but I think she's just saying that. How can anywhere else be more fun than this place? Well, maybe the city but mommy says that only special people get to go there. Though when I asked her if we were special she said of course we were, so now I'm really confused!_

–––––

Weiss sighed. "We're lost, aren't we."

"We are _not_ lost," Ruby protested. "We just don't know exactly where we are, at the moment."

"That's called being lost."

Technology could only go so far, and even though Ruby had a compass and map she still needed to find landmarks to figure out where she was. Which was in this instance the main problem because the landmarks she was looking for were buried under 8 feet of snow.

Stupid snow.

"It's probably that way," Blake said and pointed to what Ruby seemed a random direction.

"Why?"

"I can smell it." Blake raised her head and sniffed to confirm. "Someone came by here recently and went in that direction."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Of course a Faunus like you can tell something like that."

Blake glared.

But without any better leads to go on, they decided to go in the direction Blake pointed. They needed to find somewhere more sturdy to pitch their tent anyways because on top of a snow pack wasn't ideal. They weren't more than a day or two away from the village, but it still wasn't in view. Though if they could get to high ground they _might_ be able to see the lights. If the night was clear.

A clear night would be a little much to hope for though.

–––––

 _Dear diary,_

 _Sammy is dead._

 _Mommy says— mommy—_

–––––

"That's the last entry," Blake said. "There's also some water damage on this page, I think she was crying when she wrote this. The handwriting is worse than usual."

Ruby was crying herself. She even had to pull up her goggles and remove her glove so she could wipe the tears out of her eyes.

"W-Why would you read that out loud to us..." Weiss said. "S-Stupid Faunus."

"I really hope we can find this girl," Ruby said. "I hope she's okay. What's her name?"

"Alice."

They were close to Falkirk now. They had found a road that Ruby recognized and by the day's end they would make it to the village, if it was still there. The weather had been relatively nice during the past week and according to the weather report Weiss had on her mobile, it would continue being nice for at least another four days.

People were still saying it's going to be a long winter though.

"Is that it?" Blake asked, pointing ahead. Ruby couldn't see anything but pulled out her binoculars. In the distance she could make out some structures.

"Looks like."

They quickened their pace now that their goal was in sight. When they came upon the town nothing seemed out of place. Nobody was out and about but there was smoke coming from the chimneys. A good sign.

They came across a man in a large coat sitting on a stump. There was a spear lying next to him but by the amount of snow on top of it Ruby figured he probably hadn't needed to use it very often.

"Excuse me," Weiss said. "We're huntresses. Did a large group of people come by here relatively recently? From another village, likely carrying lots of construction supplies?"

"It was Greenshire," Ruby offered. "I think."

The man nodded. "Yeah," he said. His voice was gruff. "Came lookin' for shelter few months back. A real shame, their village was overrun by Grimm y'know. They built down on the south part of town. An' it was Green _stone_ , not that it matters any more."

"Thanks."

It wasn't too hard to spot where the new residents were. The buildings were clearly constructed quite recently and rather hastily at that. Compared to the more solid foundations of the rest of the village, the buildings along the southern edge were closer to shacks than actual homes.

They seemed to function well enough. They didn't quite know where to begin but by knocking on doors. The villagers seemed to know each other all though because the second house they went to knew who Alice was, and pointed them in the right direction.

Ruby breathed a sigh of relief that she seemed to be alive. Neither Weiss nor Blake said anything but Ruby imagined they were feeling the same thing.

Alice's house wasn't much more impressive than any of the others. It had a roof and a chimney with little puffs of smoke coming out of it. Ruby pushed Blake to the front of the group. She knocked on the door, holding Alice's diary against her chest.

A middle-aged woman answered the door. Her eyes widened when she saw her three strange visitors. "Can I help you three?"

"Ma'am," Blake said softly keeping her head down. "Do you happen to have a daughter named Alice?"

She nodded. "What's this about?"

Blake held out the book. "I think we have her diary."

"Her..." The woman looked down at the book and gently took it from Blake's hands. "Alice honey, can you come here?" She said loudly towards the inside of her house. A few seconds later a small girl jogged up.

"Hey that's—!" She said once she saw the book.

"These people found your diary for you." The mother handed the book back to her kid, who grabbed it and flipped through it. "Say thank you."

"T-Thank you!" The girl hugged the diary close. "I thought I would never see this again."

Blake smiled as the girl ran back into the house.

"Why would you go through so much trouble?" The woman asked. "You're hunters, right? Surely there's something else you could be doing."

Blake didn't seem to know how to answer. She glanced back at Ruby.

"Things like this are just as important." Ruby glanced around at the quiet little village they were in. "Being a force of good, even if it's just doing small little favors. Shining a light and making sure people know there's good people and good things to live for is what's really important."

Nobody said anything in response to that. The silence hung for a bit longer than Ruby would have liked and she started to feel embarrassed. She said stuff like that to most of the villages she found—it wasn't just her worldview or anything like that. It was factual that happy thoughts deterred Grimm.

"Would you three like to stay the night?" The mother offered.

They accepted.

The woman was happy enough to cook them a real meal for a change, though this late into winter none of the food was fresh except the meat. It was still better than the canned stuff Ruby hauled around with her and the girl's mother was actually skilled at cooking. Unlike anyone on Ruby's team.

Most of the evening was spent answering Alice's questions about being a hunter. She was a really energetic kid and Ruby got caught up in it. Blake seemed to be deeply embarrassed by the attention she was getting even if she masked it well.

"Ahh, excuse me." Blake said. She stepped outside to answer her mobile. After she left, Weiss checked her own.

"Oh, we _do_ get a signal out here. Huh." Weiss peered out the single window. "I guess the weather's not too bad."

"Miss Weiss Miss Weiss," exclaimed Alice. "Is that a hunter's phone? Can I see? Can I can I?"

Weiss blushed and handed it over to Alice to play with. Hunters had a special type of mobile issued by the guild. It functioned much like any other cellular phone, though it was a lot sturdier. A _lot_ sturdier. Among having other bells and whistles hunters tended to need.

Blake walked back in a few minutes later. She had a strange look on her face.

"Everything okay, Blake?"

She nodded and sat back down on the floor. Alice and her mother lived in a small house. It only had a living room and one bedroom so Ruby, Weiss and Blake had to sleep on the couch and floor. Ruby was just happy for a roof over her head, but Weiss _insisted_ on taking the couch.

Ruby fell asleep with a smile on her face.


	8. Pair

_Rose Petals in the Snow_

 **Pair**

In the morning, Blake was gone. She left nothing but a single envelope.

–––––

 _Dear Ruby,_

 _I deeply apologize for leaving, but I have no other option. Those whom I left to travel with you? They need me. And though I left them for a reason—several reasons—beyond all of that they are still my family. They practically raised me, and despite everything I love them._

 _And they need me._

 _I do believe you are still correct. The Grimm are the true threat at play here, and our squabbles are just that. But, well. I don't know how to say it. You take care of yourself first, your family second, and everything else after that. Right?_

 _You were my warden, but also my friend. And I have betrayed you—whatever you choose to do, Ruby, I understand. But my heart tells me this is what I must do. I must go where I belong._

 _I'm sorry._

 _Blake._

–––––

"What's it say?" Weiss asked. The letter had been addressed to Ruby and she figured it was probably private. Though Blake had still used rather vague word choice so even if Weiss saw it she probably wouldn't figure out exactly what it meant.

Ruby folded the letter and slipped it into her pocket. "She's going back to her family."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Typical of a Faunus. Doesn't even bother to say goodbye."

There wasn't much to say to that so Ruby just took a sip of her mug of coffee. Their hostess had brewed them a pot and told them to stay as long as they'd like before taking her daughter to school. Ruby didn't know what Weiss wanted to do, but she wanted to see if anyone needed any help. There was usually work for a hunter to do outside the wall.

First though she'd finish her coffee. Ruby really wasn't a morning person.

"So much for Team RWBY." Weiss hung her head. "We actually worked really well in that cave. I can't believe we only lasted one mission."

Ruby laughed. "What'd you expect with a corny name like that?"

Weiss groaned and stomped off to collect her things. Even though Alice's mother had told them to stay as long as they liked they wouldn't impose. Unless they found a reason to stay in town today, Ruby figured they would head to greener pastures. Metaphorically of course, there was little _actually_ green this time of the year.

They made sure to wash their mugs in the sink before leaving.

"So where to, Ruby?" Weiss asked.

"Really?" Ruby stared at Weiss. "Don't you want to go back to Vale, or something?"

Weiss shrugged. "I guess I'm just curious, alright? If it's such a problem I'll—"

"No no no, sorry. Just surprised. C'mon."

Most villages were fairly similar. Each one had its own little flavor of uniqueness to be sure but at their core they all fit the same mold. Most importantly at the center was usually an open area that served as a sort of market. Small villages didn't actually buy and sell goods with currency, but they still had an area for everyone to meet and trade. Larger villages did use currency, but even then it was very informal.

It was the best place to find work for a hunter. Most of the time all Ruby really had to do was hang out—she had the look of a hunter. The clients would come to her.

Not that what she did was as formal as having "clients."

"So this is what you do?" Weiss asked. "You stand on the side of the street like some whore?"

Ruby coughed. "P-Please don't use words like that..."

"But seriously. You know that the Huntsman's Guild has a _system_ in place, right? People who need assistance inform the guild, which then posts an official mission on the boards. Any available hunters can then read it, know all the details of the job, and complete it. We don't need to stand here in the cold."

Even though she let Weiss ramble on about how the guild worked, Ruby did know. She was officially a hunter, after all. There was a test and everything. The problem Ruby immediately had identified with the job system was mostly with payment. Jobs that paid well would get eaten up, and jobs that didn't pay well would often stay ignored. Even if they were urgent.

Ruby didn't bring this up to Weiss. Instead, she set her eyes on something else.

"Let's go over here."

Ruby grabbed Weiss's wrist and led her across the market area. There were a couple men around a worn-looking cart that Ruby thought looked particularly desperate. Something about the look on their faces worried her. She looked at faces a lot—emotion had a lot to do with repelling Grimm.

"Excuse me, sir." Ruby said to one of the men. "Can I ask what's going on? You seem scared."

The man turned around and sighed. "It that obvious?"

Ruby nodded.

"Truth is we're from up North. Our town got attacked by Grimm and we lost some of our food stores. We're going 'round asking for help."

Their cart was about half full. Ruby wasn't sure how much food they lost but what their cart held probably wasn't enough to make up for it. She also noted a spear and a rifle laying in tit, neither looked like it used Dust in any way.

"Sorry but we don't really have any food," Ruby said.

"Oh don't worry, we weren't really asking random passersby." The man gave a halfhearted laugh. "Our route will take us through a couple more villages before we have to head back. We should be fine."

"Keep your spirits up." Ruby eyed the back of the cart again. "I'd hate for you to get attacked on the road. Want some help? We're hunters, you know."

The man averted his gaze. "We can't pay."

"That's okay," Ruby exclaimed. "Just let me ride in your cart, my sis' said I need to take it easy."

Weiss coughed and grabbed Ruby's shoulder, pulling her back a step. " _Ruby,_ " Weiss whispered. " _An unregistered mission for no pay? Why the hell are we doing this?_ "

" _They need help._ "

" _Barely._ "

" _It'll be fun. Trust me."_ Ruby gave Weiss a pat on the shoulder and turned back to the traveler. "Deal?"

"Deal." The men smiled and held out their arms. "I'm Roger, that's Dean. I'll be honest, we've been kind of worried if we get attacked by Grimm on the road."

"Ruby," she said and shook their hands.

"Weiss."

And by the day's end they were on their way. True to the deal they made, Ruby was riding comfortably in the back of the cart among the foodstuffs. Weiss was content walking alongside, claiming something about strengthening her endurance. Ruby could respect that.

They didn't make it very fall before nightfall. This time of the year the sun always set early, but at least they could actually _see_ the sun today. The weather had been peaceful of late and Ruby was going to make the most of it while she could. It would be too much to hope the weather stayed this nice.

Midday the next morning they decided to stop the cart and take in the sight. Nothing but white for miles and miles in every direction, not even a single tree. Just a uniform blanket of snow.

"Is this the... plains?" Weiss asked.

"Yup." Roger cracked his knuckles. "We'll just cut across the end of 'em, but it's a crazy sight. Prettier during the spring though."

Ruby looked through her binoculars at the plains, but they didn't show anything at all that she could see with her own eyes. It really was just completely flat. She'd never been here before, let alone during the winter.

"We probably won't be attacked out there. Nuthin' for cover, and the Grimm like being sneaky."

"Ha," Ruby said loudly. "Tell me about it."

They spent the day trading stories. Ruby and Weiss had plenty to share and the men responded in kind with their own tales. Some of them were great just as stories, but the ones involving Grimm always triggered that tactical part of Ruby's brain. Wondering why they were there, thinking about their movement and migration patterns.

Useful information to be sure but it had a habit of ruining otherwise interesting tales.

"This one is from my first month as a hunter," Ruby said. "I'd gone to go help with something posted on the guild, bunch of wolves harassing a village. Super interesting place by the way, built around an old decrepit keep. Anyways there was already a hunter there. When I found her she was standing on the roof of the keep shouting 'I'm queen of the castle.' It was so un-hunter like I fell over laughing."

Weiss nodded. "That would be Nora, right? I remember you two got matched in the tournament."

"Yeah." Ruby leaned back against some of the stuff in the cart and looked up at the sky. There were clouds here and there but the blue sky still shone through. "Her lightheartedness really struck me."

Roger cracked the whip against the horse and the cart sped up a tad. They had turned onto a straightaway or something Ruby imagined. She didn't know the finer points of driving a horse-drawn carriage.

"We've only seen a handful of hunters out here," he said. "But they all seem like oddballs to me. No offense."

Weiss rolled her eyes, but Ruby laughed. "We're all crazy in our own special way I guess."

They almost made it to the next village by nightfall and decided to keep riding through the darkness to get there. It would be for less than an hour and Ruby and Weiss would be able to handle anything that tried to attack. Not that anything would, Grimm usually waited until at least a few hours after the darkness fell before becoming more active.

Though these days Ruby wasn't sure of even that any more.

Roger and Dean parked the cart outside an inn and said they would talk with the villagers in the morning. Ruby and Weiss decided to share a room—the inn didn't have all that many to spare.

It was a nice little room. There was a queen-sized bed, a private bathroom and even a television. The signal was spotty at best but they could watch _something_ at the very least. Ruby sat back in a chair leaning it against the foot of the bed watching some children's show while Weiss showered. She didn't want to dirty the bed, otherwise she would have watched the TV from under the covers.

They swapped once Weiss was done. The one thing Ruby really missed about living in the city was the feel of a long, hot shower every night. Even when she visited villages there wasn't always opportunity to take a shower. Larger towns had the infrastructure, but the smaller migratory ones just couldn't afford to do it.

Large public baths were their go-to though which were fun in their own right.

"Ahh." Ruby stepped out of the shower with a towel around her waist and another draped over her head. "That felt great."

Weiss was laying in bed watching a news program on the television. Some reporter was talking about a large protest that had broken out in Vale. Faunus chanting for equal rights again. Ruby could never be bothered with the specifics.

"I get Blake," Ruby said. "But what do you care about the Faunus?"

"Hmm?" Weiss muted the television. The reporter wasn't saying anything that hasn't been said a thousand times already anyways. "I'm Weiss Schnee. My family owns the Dust quarry."

"And?" Ruby reached down into the cooler and pulled out a bottle of milk she had bought earlier.

"And our miners are Faunus."

"So? Sorry, I don't really get it."

Weiss sighed. "Because they're Faunus we can pay them next to nothing and shave costs on otherwise-required safety regulations."

Ruby was about to take a swig of her milk, but set it down instead. "That... seems really unfair."

"Perhaps. Do you think me a monster, then?"

"N-No, but why—" Ruby rolled the bottle around on the little table. "Why don't you treat them better?"

"Where do you think your Dust comes from?" Weiss gestured towards Ruby's weapon, which was leaning against the wall in its full scythe form. "The unfairness of it allows the Schnee company to hire more workers and therefore mine more Dust, making it actually affordable and accessible. If these Faunus get what they want everything won't suddenly be sunshine and rainbows. We'll have to cut ninety percent of the labor force and drive up Dust prices at least tenfold. The cost to fire a single shot out of your sniper would be high enough to feed a family for a month."

Ruby turned toward the TV. It was showing clips of Faunus very passionately protesting for equality. Ruby wasn't exactly the best person in terms of following stuff like this, but she had thought the Faunus had the moral upper ground. But when it came down to it Ruby thought Weiss had a point.

She needed Dust. They all did.

Ruby sipped her milk. "Scooch over Weiss, I wanna lay down too."

She moved over and they decided to change the channel to something more upbeat. There wasn't much of a selection way out here but they found a kind-of-lame nature show they could both enjoy. Some team had followed the life of some alley cat for a month.

They turned off the lights after the show, but Ruby laid there for awhile. It was really quiet, all the bugs and animals silenced by the blanket of winter. She could hear every creak and groan of the building settling in the night.

"Hey Ruby..." Weiss said softly. "Are you awake?"

"Yeah."

"Can I ask you why..." Weiss turned to face Ruby. "...why you do these sorts of things? Help out two random travelers. Why you live out here instead of in the city. Just... I don't get you."

Ruby stared up at the ceiling. There was a small crack but no light was pouring through. She wasn't sure if it was because the crack was only shallow or if clouds were covering the moon.

"My mom was Summer Rose," she answered.

Weiss sat up. "The huntress? But she—ah... I'm sorry..."

"Thanks." Ruby turned over. "Ever since she died, home just didn't feel like home."

Weiss sat there for awhile with Ruby watching her in the darkness. She wouldn't be able to sleep with her sitting up like that but she seemed to be thinking about something. Eventually she reached under the sheets and held Ruby's hand, leaning back against her pillow.

It felt nice. They held hands like that until they fell asleep.

In the morning they found Roger and Dean in the market district with a new crate and a few bags in the back of their cart. Looks like they were doing well.

"Hey you two, ready to go?"

Ruby and Weiss nodded. There wasn't as much room for Ruby in the cart, but she could sit on one of the boxes. Honestly she could probably walk just fine but she had promised Yang to take it easy. Plus her wound _was_ healing nicely and Ruby didn't really want to sabotage it.

"So we're headin' up through the pass next. We'll loop down around the other side of it and through the forest towards home. There should be another two villages in our path."

"Got it." Ruby wasn't too familiar with the area. She knew of something close by but she never actually spent too long around this part of the continent.

After everyone was packed up and ready they set out. They had exhausted most of the stories and discussions already so Ruby decided to spend the journey staring up at the sky. She didn't really think about much. She just watched the clouds pass by.

Though now that she thought about it she probably should have been keeping some sort of watch for Grimm. She pulled out her binoculars and decided to at least look like she was helping.

The path inclined by late afternoon. The pass they would travel through wasn't insanely dangerous or anything but it was still a bit of a tough hike. Ruby was a little glad she got to ride in the cart instead of walking alongside it like the others.

"I've never been here before," Weiss commented.

"I've been in this mountain range, but not here specifically." Ruby looked ahead with her binoculars. She didn't see anything and set them back down.

One of the men laughed. "It's a pretty big range, missy. Where've ya been?"

"The part closer to the city."

The landscape slowly changed as shelves of rock rose on either side of the path. The road winded through the mountains as though a part of them, but at the same time still very man-made. Their group was covered in shadows from the canyons long before the sun truly set.

Lanterns were lit and torches ignited as the cart still rolled along its path. There didn't really seem to be a good place to camp except right on the road itself. Which Ruby figured would be fine, it's not like anyone would try to get by them in the dead of night.

Ruby raised her binoculars.

"Hey Ruby."

"Yeah, I see it."

The road made a sharp bend up ahead. In the dark it was hard for Ruby to really make out much, but the land gave its own tells.

"Sure would be a good place for an ambush, wouldn't it?"

Weiss nodded.

Ruby swung herself off the cart and stood next to Weiss, drawing her weapon. Weiss drew hers as well. The two men pulled their own not nearly as effective weapons and pulled the cart to a halt.

"I'm assuming they'll go for the cart," Weiss said. "I'll use gylphs to light up the canyon. Can you pick off any Grimm you see when I do?"

"Yes." Ruby expanded her weapon into its sniper form and leaned the barrel on the edge of the cart. Shooting up was never a very easy task, especially on the fly as Weiss wanted her to.

Weiss drew her sword. She softly counted down from three, and on one the entire canyon was lit up under the glow of a hundred glyphs on all the walls. It was almost as bright as daytime. Ruby stared at the ridges above them looking for the outline of Grimm.

— _Bang._

There were snarls and growls that echoed across the evening sky. Ruby fired several shots from her sniper but she wasn't sure if she had hit anything. But their tactic had, at the very least, broke up the ambush that was waiting for them. The Grimm scurried away into the darkness after their failure.

The glyphs faded after a minute though every torch and lantern they had was turned on and hung around the cart.

"Is it safe to camp here?" Roger asked.

"We should move ahead for at least fifteen minutes," Weiss said. "Or backtrack, whatever you think is a better place to rest. We should definitely be on the alert though."

Ruby nodded. According to Roger there was a place he had in mind a little ways away so they continued onward for about half an hour. Ruby wasn't riding along anymore, walking opposite Weiss with her weapon drawn.

They stopped at the center of a little straightaway that had a small shack built into the side of the mountain. It was clearly a place travelers were meant to rest for the night. They couldn't exactly pull the cart into it or anything though.

After hanging lanterns around the general area they set up their watch schedule and settled down for the night. They made sure to leave the campfire burning bright all night. Grimm weren't necessarily deterred by light or by fire but it did make them think twice before attacking.

Plus it was a lot better on people's psyches to be in brightly lit areas rather than complete darkness.

Morning came without incident though Ruby was fairly certain that a few Grimm wandered by inspecting the situation. She never fired her weapon nor had to wake anyone up though which was a plus.

Their journey the next day was not quite as casual as it was previously, however.

"They're following us," Ruby said. She was sitting in the back of the cart leaning against her backwards-facing rifle.

"Of course they are." Weiss wasn't dexterous enough to hike backwards but she kept an eye in every direction. "The question is if they'll attack."

Ruby started to shift a few boxes around in the cart to be able to position herself better. "If we can be a big enough threat then they'll just feed on our general air of nervousness. Grimm do have a sense of self-preservation. I'm going to shoot anything I see, or anything I think I see, so try not to be surprised if you hear my rifle go off."

"Do you have the ammo?"

"I'm carrying more than I usually do. We're fine."

Just the act at firing at anything that moved seemed to be enough to ward off a Grimm attack during the day and through the following nights they had to spend traveling through the pass. Though by the fourth day Ruby actually was worried she would run out of ammo. Even at only a shot every thirty minutes to an hour, over four days that added up.

Luckily they exited the pass right into the embracing arms of a small village.

"Wish us luck."

Ruby and Weiss waved off the men as they went to go ask the village heads for supplies. There wasn't a chance of getting of nice a room at an inn as they had in the last town, but it couldn't hurt to look. They didn't get very far though before a loud sound interrupted their search.

"That sounds like a—"

A helicopter punched through the clouds overhead, the beat of its propellers echoing through the mountains. It slowly descended until they could make out the lettering on the side.

 **SCHNEE DUST COMPANY**

"Huh," said Weiss. "I wonder if that's for me."

The helicopter hovered over to an open area somewhere off in the distance to land. Weiss decided they should at least go check it out and Ruby followed. It had landed in a small clearing just on the edge of the village.

When they arrived they found two men in uniforms huddling over a map or something, Ruby couldn't really see. They looked up when Weiss started walking over though with looks of relief on their faces.

"Ah, Miss Schnee."

"Can you explain what's going on?"

The man nodded. "I was asked by your father to pick you up and bring you back to Vale. He said he would explain why when you met."

"Why didn't he just call?"

The man just shrugged.

Ruby stood by while Weiss made what sounded like a very frustrating call. There was a look of disappointment on Weiss's face when she finally hung up the phone and stepped over towards Ruby.

"Sorry."

Ruby nodded. "It's okay."

"I don't really know what's going on, but I have the feeling I really need to go back."

"I said it's okay. Thanks for doing this with me until now."

"It was—"

"I'm going to hug you now."

And before Weiss could react Ruby wrapped her arms around her and pulled her tight. She wasn't really sure why she did it, it just felt appropriate. Weiss wasn't sure how to respond and just gave Ruby a sort of awkward shoulder pat, so Ruby let her go.

"Tell Roger and Dean I'm sorry for leaving." Weiss stepped up into the helicopter. "Take care of yourself, Ruby."

"You too."

The uniformed man stepped into the helicopter after her and pulled the door shut. Ruby stepped away and watched as the helicopter lifted off and headed back in the direction of Vale. Within a few minutes it had been absorbed into the cloudy sky.

Ruby thought that it looked like it would start snowing again soon.

She helped Roger and Dean back to their village before deciding there was somewhere important she needed to visit again.


	9. Summer

_Rose Petals in the Snow_

 **Summer**

There was a famous valley a few days' hike from Vale. For most of the year it wasn't anything special, just another valley outside the wall. But during the late spring the sunflowers bloomed, filling the whole valley in a sea of yellow and orange for the entire summer. It was such a sight that the valley had remained completely untouched by humans. No one wanted to destroy such a wonder of nature.

Not even the Grimm wandered into such a place. A safe haven if there ever was one.

Ruby overlooked the valley from a high ridge. It was the middle of winter and the valley didn't have that majesty to it. It was as much a wasteland as anywhere else. A wasteland untouched by human hands, save for a single carved stone slab at the top of the ridge.

"Hi mom."

She brushed away the snow in front of the gravestone and laid down a blanket before sitting down.

"It's been almost a year, I guess. Last time we talked I had just become a hunter." Ruby brushed some more of the snow off the stone. "Sorry about that still, I know you never wanted this life for me. I may be a bit of a bad daughter, I'm not even really following in your footsteps. I think I'm doing good though. Helping people in my own way."

Ruby gathered a pile of sticks she had been carrying into a small bundle and lit it with a Dust igniter. It wasn't much of a campfire, but it would keep her warm for a bit. She warmed her hands against it.

"I met some people."

She smiled.

"You know Yang, of course, but there were a couple of others. This girl, Blake. She's a Faunus with the White Fang. She can seem really tough and scary on the outside, but once you get to know her she's actually really soft. I think she'd be a really nice person if the world wasn't so against her, you know?"

Ruby pulled out a mug from her pack and a packet of some high quality hot chocolate. It was the only good one she had. She used her fire to prepare it properly.

"There's also this other girl, Weiss. I thought she was really mean when we first met, but that's not really it. She comes off a bit arrogant, sure, but I think... I think she's just trying to do good in her own way. We're both trying to do the same thing, in the end."

She pulled the scarf around her mouth while her hot water boiled.

"Plus she's super smart and really elegant looking. A-Also, mom, umm. There's this weird tightness in my chest when we talk, and sometimes I can't help but glance at her just because. I, I, uwah..." Ruby fumbled poured the boiling water into her mug and accidentally spilled some on her hand. "Ouch!"

Ruby looked over to the stone.

"Was that your doing?" She laughed to herself and mixed her cocoa. "A-Anyways, I was glad to travel with both of them. And I traveled with Yang for a bit too, we even had a team and everything. Though it didn't last very long. All of them went back to where they belonged."

Ruby looked out to the ridge.

"Leaving just me out here, I guess."

She sipped her hot chocolate and watched the snow lightly fall over the valley. Ruby could spend hours here, even during the winter. There was a serene silence that calmed her, and the presence of her mother was more comforting than anyone else. Even her sister.

"Mom, I—" Ruby looked down at the snow. "I like it, you know. Being out here. When you died I was really angry at the Grimm. I wanted to kill them because of what they did. But now that I'm actually out here, actually doing that... I like it. It's fun, mom. I hope that doesn't make me a bad person."

Ruby reached into her coat and pulled out her mobile. She refreshed the news page that was up, but it only displayed the same article.

 _Protests Break out in Violence!_

A Faunus protest around the Schnee Company corporate headquarters in Vale had apparently turned to violence and there was rioting in the streets. It was really escalating.

"We hunted a Fenrir-class," Ruby said and put her phone away. "Probably wasn't the big bad wolf that killed you, I don't think there's ever really a way to know for certain. But it was definitely bad and we killed it. Weiss had a really good plan, she's a great leader. I don't think I could have beat it otherwise."

Ruby mentioned some of the other things she had been up to while sipping her hot chocolate. She wasn't really aware of how much time was going by, but the fire slowly dwindled beside her. She didn't have much tinder to use and there weren't any trees nearby.

"But when I think about it, mom... I don't know if I want to carry on like this. Being on a team with Weiss, and Blake, and Yang was really... fun isn't the word. I think I felt like—maybe, like I belonged? There was something different about it than just walking around the outskirts."

Her phone started to beep. She pulled it out and checked it.

–– **URGENT –– URGENT –– URGENT ––**

 _Incident at Vale_

 _Large number of Grimm amassing outside the walls, attempting to breach._

 _Requesting all huntsmen to assist the defense._

She sighed.

"It's starting, mom."

Ruby stood up and looked towards the sky. There was a hole in the clouds she could see the blue sky through.

"The world's been screwy for a while now. The Grimm only grow stronger while we fight among ourselves. You'd know exactly what to do if you were here now, I bet. Did I help at all? Has anything I've done hold back the Grimm, or do they not even notice?"

Her phone beeped again. A text from Yang.

— _Help._

Ruby looked back to the gravestone one last time. "I love you, mom. I know you wanted a peaceful life for me, but I just don't think that was ever in the cards."

She turned away and thumbed a message back into her phone.

— _On my way._


	10. Winter

_Rose Petals in the Snow_

 **Winter**

Back when Ruby was at the quarry she had compared the Grimm to an army. At the time she thought it was a fair comparison, but now she wished she had been a bit more conservative. If the force at the quarry was an army then what she faced now was a sea.

Surrounding the walled city of Vale was a sea of Grimm. Every single Grimm in the entire continent must be here right now.

The sea parted for Ruby as she ran through it.

It wasn't a good sign. Ruby was not instilling terror into them, she was not commanding them, and despite how the scene looked the fact the Grimm made way for her was a terrible sign. It meant that they were satisfied enough not to start something with her. It meant that there was so much human misery in the air, so much hatred in the atmosphere that the Grimm would really just rather move out of Ruby's way.

Still Ruby made sure to keep an eye on them as she ran past. Even at her speed it took her ten minutes to dart through the huge amount of Grimm that was present, the swarm was just that massive. The walls of Vale slowly grew in her shadowed view.

The sky was black with the smoke of a hundred fires within Vale, darted with the dark figures of flying Grimm. Ruby wasn't even sure if the storm clouds of winter were present or if it was a perfectly sunny day.

"One, two, and—"

Ruby jumped.

She didn't have particularly strong legs, but she did have speed. And she found that most times speed could make up for strength. In this instance it let her propel herself up Vale's wall as massive as it was. She landed on top of the wall with a heavy stomp.

The wall was clad with figures in white beast masks. When Ruby appeared they raised their weapons at her.

"Woah woah woah, what are you doing?" Ruby exclaimed. She certainly didn't drop her weapon or anything of the sort. "I'm not Grimm!"

"But you're human," one of them exclaimed while thrusting his spear at her. Ruby hopped back but she was surrounded and the wall was narrow.

Ruby jumped up onto the crenelation and rushed passed the Faunus. They tried to knock her off as she rushed around the edge of the wall. She came across a group of Faunus and humans fighting, exchanging gunfire with each other.

Even though she didn't really consider herself on a particular side of this conflict, she was definitely human. So they wouldn't be the ones who were attacking her. She rushed over to their side and ran into the safety of their group. Well, as safe as it could possibly be.

She was afraid of something like this. Faunus and humans finally coming to blows. Ruby was astonished that there was still infighting though—Vale's destruction was literally waiting just outside. Did they just not see the Grimm? Or did they ignore it?

Ruby dialed a number into her mobile and Yang picked up instantly.

" _Where are you?"_

"Top of the wall, close to the southern gate."

" _On my way."_

Ruby slipped the mobile back into her coat and looked towards the inner city. From her vantage she could see fighting happening all over the city. Not just riots, but plenty of Grimm had found their way inside as well. Fires were raging and no one was even bothering to try to put them out.

She hardly knew where to begin, but she pulled out her rifle and took aim towards the closest Grimm she could see inside the city. The ones outside the wall she would leave alone—they weren't an immediate problem.

Her rifle was loud, but even it was drowned out by the fighting going on around her. It messed with her concentration and she hated having to keep looking to her right to make sure she wasn't about to be stabbed.

"Ruby!"

Yang's shout came from below. Ruby peered over the edge of the wall to see Yang sitting on her motorcycle, patting the back of the seat. Ruby grabbed her weapon and leaped over the side of the wall. She wasn't dexterous enough to land on the back of the seat, but she slid down next to it and hopped on the back as quick as she could.

They sped off towards the inner city.

"Care to tell me what's going on?" Ruby shouted, clinging onto Yang's midsection for dear life as the bike sped to upwards of one hundred miles per hour.

"Riots broke out. Attracted a lot more Grimm than anyone thought it would."

Yang slowed the bike and turned onto the on ramp of a highway. There were a few Grimm lurking around, smashing an abandoned car. Yang ignored them and sped up her bike. Ruby held out her rifle and blasted them as they rode past. Just in case.

The highway was empty, giving Yang plenty of room to speed down it.

"The wall was breached in a few spots," she explained. "The guild blocked off the commercial district. Everywhere else is in chaos."

"Is that where we're going?" They had to shout to overcome the sound of Yang's bike.

"Yeah."

They didn't make it more than a mile before running into a large group of Grimm on the highway. Ruby fired into the group and they got out of the way of Yang's bike, but not without giving chase. Yang's bike was fast but the wolf Grimm managed to keep up.

Ruby hesitated to move around too much lest she fall off, but she tried to turn her body so she could fire behind them. Her aim was terrible but she managed to at least graze the pursuing wolves a few times. She even hit one of them dead on.

"Hey Rubes, you deal with speed right?" Yang shouted after Ruby fired one more shot.

"Yeah why?"

"We, uhh. We have a jump coming up."

Ruby turned back to look ahead. About a mile down the road the highway rose into a high overpass which was entirely destroyed. There was nowhere for them to go and they would never make the jump, even at the speed they were going.

"You're crazy," Ruby shouted.

"Can you do it or not?"

Ruby collapsed her weapon and holstered it to focus on the bike. It wasn't a simple matter of moving the bike forward, the bike was moving because of the rotational energy of the wheel powered by the engine. She would have to use her semblance to increase that rotation.

Ruby eyeballed the size of the wheel, did the calculation, and gripped the bike tightly.

"Get ready," she shouted.

And she spun the wheels as fast as she could. They outstripped the Grimm as the bike shot forward far faster than it was ever designed to go. It started to wobble as they got closer and closer to the end of the bridge.

"Wooohoo!" They both shouted as the bike launched into the air. The Grimm didn't even try to pursue as the bike soared through the sky. Yang kept the arc perfect, and the bike was coming in for a perfect—

"We're not gunna make it _jump!"_

Yang and Ruby leaped off the bike as it crashed into the side of the freeway. Both of them hit the pavement and rolled. It hurt. Bad.

They both rolled to a stop quite a distance away from the edge. Ruby tried to push herself up but all her bones were aching. Hunters had the protection to withstand a lot of damage but even that was a little much.

"Y-You okay?" Yang asked.

"I think so."

"My poor bike." Yang glanced back where the bike had crashed, but it had fallen into the rubble below.

Unfortunately they would have to mourn the loss later. The fallen bridge prevented their pursuers from following but there were still plenty of airborne Grimm that slowly circled them from above. Unlike the army outside, the Grimm attacking the city were extremely aggressive.

Yang darted down the highway on foot, Ruby easily following behind. She claimed that the guild's command post wasn't more than a mile away. Yang wasn't as fast as Ruby but she was still fit enough to run a mile in five or six minutes.

That wasn't counting the Grimm that stood in their way, however. Nothing attacked them that they couldn't handle and in fact Ruby thought that they seemed rather on the weaker side.

"According to Ozpin the ones actually attacking are the most desperate," Yang clarified.

Made sense. Even though no one really understood the Grimm, they knew they fed on negative emotions. More importantly, proximity played a role. The Grimm outside the city didn't _need_ to enter, but the ones who needed to feed needed to get closer.

"There it is," Yang said and pointed down off the highway. Ruby looked and saw blockades and roadblocks set up all around the commercial area of Vale. Some of them were military-grade but there was a fair amount of overturned buses and trucks that served as walls too.

It was clearly not the ideal situation.

Yang and Ruby rushed towards it. There were plenty men stationed along the makeshift wall with various types of weapons, but mostly they had rifles. As they ran past Ruby got a glance and noticed one of them used Dust cartridges.

Nobody stopped them as they navigated around the roadblock. The both of them were clearly hunters.

Yang led them to some Dust shop that Ruby had never frequented, not that it was open. None of the shops or stores were open. But outside the shop Ruby saw a lot of parked vans and men running around, along with a lot of crates. Standing around shouting orders was Goodwitch.

"Goodwitch," Yang shouted. Goodwitch looked over and Yang pointed at Ruby. They walked over.

"Ruby, if I remember?" She asked. Ruby nodded. "Excellent."

Goodwitch rustled around in one of the packs lying around until she found what looked to Ruby to be a small little headset. Goodwitch fiddled with the buttons on it a little bit and then held it out.

"Put this in your ear," she explained. "It'll interface with your Scroll automatically, but right now there's three channels. One to talk with your commander, one to talk to your team, and one that's open to anybody listening. Try not to abuse that last one."

"My team?"

"RWBY," Yang said. "We're still registered under it, technically. Blake's in the wind though."

Ruby looked towards the pack Goodwitch pulled the headset out of. "Can I have another one of those in case we run into her?"

Goodwitch nodded and handed her another one. "If you know where you might find her then do so, otherwise gather however much of your team as you can and head towards—well, do you know where _Cadence's_ is?"

"No," Ruby said.

"I do," Yang followed up.

"There's a section of the outer wall that a lot of Grimm have been pouring in through. It's making defending this district hard since it's so close and we've been trying to barricade it. Head there and help after you find the rest of your team."

Yang and Ruby nodded. Goodwitch was about to spun around but Ruby interrupted.

"Wait, I'm almost out of Dust. Is there somewhere I can..."

Goodwitch pointed towards the stack of crates off to the side. "We have tons of the stuff. Take however much you want." With that she spun around and began issuing orders to others. Ruby and Yang loaded up with what they needed from the Dust storage and were on their way.

The two of them mutually decided that their first move would be to find Weiss. She was surely in the city somewhere and apparently she and Yang had paired up to do some fighting. They hadn't worked all that well together with just the two of them though.

"Hey Weiss," Ruby said into her headset. "Sorry I'm late to the party."

" _Ruby! You came back?"_

"Yeah. Where are you?"

" _The Schnee building."_

That was disheartening. Ruby didn't know the city all that well, but she knew it well enough to know that the Schnee building was far away. Too far to simply walk, but they had already trashed Yang's bike. While Ruby thought about how they would get all the way over there, Yang smashed in the window of the nearest sedan and opened the door.

"Uh, don't you need a key to drive that?" Ruby asked.

Yang sat in the driver's seat and stuck _something_ into the slot next to the steering wheel and turned. The car started up.

"Nope."

"...right." Ruby ran around to the passenger side and got in the car. It was a pretty old-looking four-door sedan but the engine purred and they sped off down the abandoned streets. "I guess this is your element, huh."

Yang grinned. "You can have the outside, I'll take the inside."

Ruby stared out the window and looked at the damage to the city as the buildings sped by. Most of them were just fine except for all of the boarded up windows and doors. But they passed by an area that was completely ablaze, and then another area a little while later in a similar state.

Since Yang was driving through the surface streets it took them around fifteen minutes to make it to Schnee Tower even without having to worry about stoplights. When they arrived they found a full-scale battle going on between the Faunus and the humans.

Yang stopped the car on the edge of the battle. A couple of heads turned in their direction but no one directly attacked them. At least not yet. Ruby looked out to try to find Weiss but couldn't see her.

" _I'm inside. Where are you guys exactly?"_

"We're on, uh." Ruby looked out the car at the nearest road sign. "Main street. A little past—"

Ruby was interrupted by the sound of the rear door opening. She and Yang both spun around and grabbed their weapons to see Blake get in the back seat.

"Hey guys." Blake shut the door.

Yang started laughing. "Where the hell did you come from?"

"I saw you guys drive up." Blake stared down at the space between the seats. "This has gotten too out of hand. The White Fang should have stopped fighting when the Grimm came... but they just... they just kept on..."

"It is what it is." Yang leaned back in her seat and rolled her head to look at Blake in the back. "For now we just gotta keep people safe. Damage control, you know."

Blake nodded.

"Here, take this." Ruby handed Blake the headset they were using to communicate. "We're going to go try to hold off the Grimm. You with us?"

Blake nodded again.

"Great. Now all we're waiting for is Weiss."

A minute later Weiss made her appearance hopping right over the combat. She drew glyphs in the air and jumped across them completely bypassing the fighting going on underneath her. A few of the Faunus fired their guns in the air but she avoided the shots.

Though when she got into their car they suddenly became a prime target. Yang gunned the engine and sped away from the fighting as bullets embedded into the trunk of the sedan.

"Wow they don't like you, do they," Ruby said. Weiss just snorted and glanced at Blake who was sitting beside her.

"I'm not entirely sure this one isn't going to stab me."

"The thought crossed my mind."

"No fighting you two," Ruby said. "Each other, I mean. Please fight the Grimm, fight them lots and lots."

Yang pulled the handbrake and tried to drift the next turn. It worked better than Ruby expected it too but she still smashed into a trashcan. Far from perfect. Ruby wondered how her sister got to be such a good driver.

As they neared their destination the devastation seemed to increase. Instead of the odd patch that was on fire here and there, it seemed most of the buildings had sustained some amount of damage. Even the road started cracking and overturned cars littered their path. Yang maneuvered around them but before long they had to slow their speed.

A large wolf Grimm leaped in front of the car. Yang slammed on the brakes as Ruby fired a shot at it through the front windshield. The wolf wasn't killed but it was stunned for long enough for all for of them to bail out of the vehicle. It pounced on the car right as they exited, squashing it.

Between the four of them firing on it at once though, it didn't stand a chance. The Grimm was obliterated where it stood.

"Why does this keep happening?" Yang shouted.

"I imagine the Grimm are trying to attack vehicles," Ruby said. "Being unable to move can be distressing. That's what they're after."

"Well it's working."

Ruby smiled. "Keep your spirits up. Now we get to have some exercise." She pointed her weapon down the street. "Forward march!"

Team RWBY ran down the streets of Vale towards the hole in the wall. They weren't too far from it but the amount of Grimm was disconcerting. They tried to keep moving but they had to often stop to take care of any Grimm that decided to try to follow them.

When they reached the wall Ruby understood what the issue was. A huge chunk of it was simply missing entirely. Turned completely into rubble. There were numerous hunters around trying to attack what they could, but it looked like the hole was far from being defended in any reasonable manner.

Weiss communicated with someone on her headset. She was their leader, after all. After some back and fourth Ruby only heard one side of, Weiss turned to the rest of her team.

"Here's the issue," she began. "Whenever they try to barricade the wall the Grimm just amass and destroy it before they can get it secured. After a few tries they stopped because it wasted supplies. They want to try again but they need the manpower to hold off a lot of Grimm for about half an hour. That's how long it takes to solder the I-beams into place. Then they need to be protected for as long as possible—it takes awhile for them to set, or something."

After Weiss's explanation, the four of them got silent for a moment. Ruby was lost in thought, but when she looked up she realized they were staring at her.

"What?"

"You're the closest thing we have to a behavioral expert for Grimm. How do we keep them away from the wall?"

"Oh." Ruby crossed her arms. "So, umm. Well the thing is what We've noticed is the only Grimm actually trying to get inside the city are the weaker ones. The desperate ones. They need to feed more, so they have to get closer. All the ones in that giant sea outside are perfectly content just absorbing what they can from so far away. So to keep the Grimm away, we actually... well, we need everyone to be depressed."

"I thought that's the opposite of what to do," Blake said.

Ruby nodded. "Usually. But if we said something like we're abandoning trying to defend the hole, people will get worried. And the Grimm won't need to get closer. I imagine everyone got all hopeful during each of the previous tries, and the Grimm had to move up and attack to smash that hope. It ebbs and flows like that."

Blake and Yang didn't look convinced, but Weiss was already on her headset. She asked for a private meeting with the commander. When he arrived she explained the situation and what they wanted to do.

After some convincing, the commander admitted it was better than nothing. He would set everything up. Team RWBY's job was to fortify and take up positions to prepare to defend the hole. Weiss told Ruby and the others the best way to deal with it.

Yang and Blake would be on the ground in front of the wall. Ruby and Weiss would provide support from on top of the wall. They also came up with a signal phrase so if Yang and Blake got overwhelmed Weiss would use her glyphs to bounce them out of danger.

After they took up positions they mostly just had to wait for the commander in charge of the area to do his own part. It was a longer wait than Ruby would have liked but eventually the message came over the public communication channel.

" _Huntsmen be advised: the Northwest breach is no longer considered defensible. Please redistribute or return to base."_

Ruby and the rest of her team stayed put while the announcement reached everybody. There was a lot of outrage over it over the open channel, but Goodwitch and Ozpin both confirmed the order. People were still mad but begrudgingly obeyed. Just as planned in some sense.

Everyone besides Team RWBY started to retreat from the breach in the wall. It wasn't immediate and there was plenty of tactical withdraws that took upwards of ten minutes. After that team RWBY started to cover everyone more enthusiastically to speed things along.

— _Bang._

Ruby stared down the scope of her rifle, firing at any Grimm that got a bit too rambunctious.

It was hard to really measure how well their plan was working. Emotions weren't something easily quantifiable. The amount of arguing going on over the open channel was indicative it wasn't at least completely useless, but Ruby wasn't so confident in her ability to read Grimm to know if it would work.

Eventually the area was deserted except for just them and the small team who would actually perform the repairs on the wall. Without the constant fighting of hunters, more Grimm started to enter the city. When Weiss gave the go-ahead Blake and Yang ran out to confront them head on.

" _Ruby, cover Yang and Blake for now. I'll take over-watch."_

Ruby swung her rifle towards her friends, ready to snipe any Grimm that would give them a hard time. The Grimm weren't doing anything so grand as storming the wall, but the withdrawal of hunters did cause an influx.

Luckily Ruby had enough Dust to fire her rifle as fast as she could pull the trigger. She thought she would be more effective down there, but Blake and Yang weren't pushovers. And Weiss seemed to have a good gauge on what everyone's strengths were.

Well, Ruby was a fine marksman too.

" _That's good enough. Build team, move in. Ruby, cover the build team."_

The presence of Blake and Yang outside the hole in the wall provided an obstacle for the Grimm to have to get past. As long as not too many rushed at once then they would be able to hold the wall. But they weren't invincible and certainly couldn't do what ten times their number were doing just hours before.

Ruby drew her rifle over to where the build team was welding in I-beams. They had worked fast—there was a mobile crane in place and they already started welding the first beam into the wall. There only seemed to be three people working though. Ruby wondered if that was enough.

— _Bang. Bang. Bang._

The Grimm surrounded Blake and Yang completely, and others ran around them to go after the men repairing the wall. Between Ruby and Weiss they could take them out from afar, but Yang and Blake were completely occupied. They wouldn't be able to defend the hole, let alone themselves.

There were just too many.

"I don't think this is going to work, guys." Ruby said into her headset.

" _What? What do you mean?"_

Ruby eyed the Grimm surrounding Blake and Yang, the Grimm trying to go after the build team, the flying Grimm that served mostly to obscure her view. They were skilled, but not heroes. They were not legendary. Only about four I-beams were up when they needed twenty.

" _Ruby, do you think I should bounce them out of there?"_ Weiss asked.

The sea of Grimm was just too much.

"I'm sorry." Ruby shot her rifle as fast as she could find targets, but it wouldn't be enough. "But you can't."

" _What?"_

"The fliers... the Nevermore are circling just above us but haven't moved. They're waiting for it. They'll dive at Blake and Yang as soon as you launch them into the air. We can't get them out."

" _Then come up with something else,"_ Yang shouted. _"We can't last down here."_

"I'm sorry."

" _Can't you—"_

"No," Ruby shouted. "There's nothing—just—just, keep fighting as long as you can. That's all we can do."

— _Bang._

Their movements became rote. Blake and Yang fought the Grimm that encircled them, Ruby fired at any Grimm that she could, and Weiss drew as many glyphs as she could to funnel or destroy them. But few words were exchanged as a grim pattern fell into place. An air of defeat hung in the air.

They fought as long as they could. The build team repaired and secured the wall as fast as they could. Six I-beams in place. Eight. Ten.

...fourteen I-beams in place.

And they were still holding on.

Sixteen.

"So, umm." Ruby thought it had been long enough. "I may have, uh, exaggerated a little bit."

" _You fucking bastard, Ruby."_

" _What? What's going on?"_ asked Weiss.

" _She tricked us,"_ said Yang. _"To make us depressed and lose hope of actually winning."_

"It worked, didn't it?" Ruby said between shots. "I know it's kinda strange, but having hope and high spirits is actually a bad thing right now. Weiss can bounce you out any time. The Nevermore actually are there but I can cover your escape."

Under normal circumstances Ruby's prime advice was to keep one's spirits up. It did tend to ward off Grimm, they wouldn't approach a town or village if they couldn't get an easy meal out of it. But the situation was different now. They were already here and already attacking. Their target was chosen.

So better to give them what they want. Give them misery, pain, and hopelessness. And while everyone fights on through that torrent of negative emotion they will succeed. They will rebuild their walls when they lost all hope they could. Because that's what it means to be human. There's nothing left to do but raise up their rifle—

— _Bang._

And shoot the bastards in the face.

" _Huntsmen be advised: The commercial district is under assault, all personnel requested."_

Ruby heard the announcement over the global channel just like the rest of her team, but it was Weiss who would make the call whether or not they ditched the wall. They were so close—but at the same time, something really serious seemed to have just happened.

" _W_ _e should go back._ _"_ Weiss said.

If there were any objections, they weren't voiced. Ruby adjusted her rifle as Weiss told the builders to retreat.

"I'm covering Blake and Yang," Ruby said. "You can bounce them whenever."

Two glyphs appeared under Blake and Yang. A second later they were both thrown into the air towards the inside of the city. There _were_ Nevermore Grimm flying above that _did_ try to attack, but Ruby easily sniped them out of the air when they tried. It wasn't a hard shot.

Weiss caught Blake and Yang with another two glyphs instead of letting them just plummet into concrete and after a little running around they reconvened in the street. Some Grimm started to poke around the partially-repaired wall testing the strength of the freshly welded I-beams.

Ruby could tell they weren't going to hold for very long.

"Come on, let's hurry," said Weiss.

The four of them took off running back towards the commercial district. It was a large area, so it wasn't immediately apparent where they were supposed to go exactly. For better or for worse that question was answered for them shortly after they made it.

In the form of a massive explosion.

A cloud of multicolored dust, cloud and ash exploded around the center of the area. They hit the ground to protect themselves from any debris though Ruby still kept an eye open in case something tried to attack them while they were prone. Grimm or otherwise.

"That came from the HQ," Weiss shouted.

A few pebbles and small scraps of metal littered around them, but they were a little too far away to be in any serious danger from the explosion. That wasn't true for everyone though. Ruby and the others got to their feet quickly and started running towards the new plume of colored smoke.

When they arrived they were met with chaos. There were people lying in the street in need of medical attention. There were hunters trying to give it, but Grimm getting in their way. And there were Faunus and members of the White Fang fighting anyone and everyone.

Ruby expanded her scythe and jumped into the fray, slicing any Grimm that came her way.

Her team joined behind her, but there was little strategy that went into it. Ruby fought whatever stood right in front of her. Saved whoever needed saving in her line of sight. But that was it. That was all she did.

The world around her burned. Chaos took over, command broke down, and the Grimm infested the once proud city of Vale.


	11. Epilogue

_Rose Petals in the Snow_

 **RWBY**

 **(Epilogue)**

Ruby eyed the incoming helicopter through the scope in her rifle. It was loaded, as always, though her finger was resting away from the trigger. Despite how close up the vehicle looked through her scope it would still be at least ten minutes before it actually reached her. She zoomed out ever so slightly so she could see the crate dangling from under.

Painted on the ground far below her perch on top of the ten-story building was a red 'X' inside of a circle. It was in a nice, open area where there wasn't a lot of cover for anything to be lurking in the shadows.

" _Seems clear from my end."_

Ruby grabbed the two-way radio resting on top of her pack and pushed the button. "Same."

The sound of the helicopter's propellers echoed through the city as it neared. When it reached the marked spot on the ground the crate detached and smashed into the ground, though it held itself together. The pilot had known exactly how low he had needed to fly to release it safely.

A group of people rushed towards the crate after it landed, Yang and Blake among them. They pried open the crate, taking the canned food and supplies within.

"Anything good?" Ruby asked into the two-way.

" _Looks like there's some of those chocolates you like,"_ Yang said.

Ruby kept an eye out for any Grimm, but it looked like it would be a slow day. Which she couldn't complain about. After the food had been dispersed to everybody, Ruby collapsed back her rifle and headed into the apartment complex. A few people waved to her as she walked past them and a kid even offered her a lollipop. She accepted of course.

Lollipops were delicious.

She didn't actually live in there, she lived in Yang's place across the street. When Ruby arrived she found Blake and Yang in the middle of some discussion while Weiss stood in the kitchen, a bored look on her face.

"Good work," she said when Ruby entered.

"You too."

Weiss held out a cup of coffee. "Here. Just brewed it from what we got from the relief drop."

Ruby gladly took a sip before setting it down so she could unload all her gear. After the collapse of Vale its neighbors offered emergency relief supplies, though they wouldn't last forever. And if Weiss was to be believed, they would run out significantly earlier than they should.

But it was better than nothing.

Weiss sat down next to Ruby on the couch but unfortunately they couldn't watch the television. Even though they had power, they didn't have cable. Just relaxing on the couch was okay too though. Ruby leaned back and took another sip from her mug.

"Looks like the last of the snow's melted," Weiss commented.

Ruby glanced outside the window. There wasn't anything to see but the metal jungle of the city. Back outside the wall—or what's left of it—would start getting very green and very beautiful soon. Farmers would start planting their crops, animals would thrive and the world would be full of life.

But still full of Grimm.

"Hey Ruby..."

Blake walked over to the couch and sat in one of the adjacent chairs. Yang was a little less polite and shoved her way onto the couch next to Ruby, squishing the three of them together in a couch really made for two.

"How come you haven't said 'I told you so?'"

"I'm sorry?"

"Back when—" Blake eyed Weiss and sighed. "Back when we were on the train, you seemed to know this would happen. Or something. So..."

Ruby leaned back in her seat and stared up at the ceiling. It was cracked but thankfully not leaking. "It doesn't feel like I was right. I kinda, you know, had an inkling. But I didn't help prevent it at all, I was completely wrong." She twiddled her thumbs. "If anything I'm... I'm ashamed that I predicted it and didn't do anything to stop it."

"Oh Rubes." Yang grabbed Ruby around her waist and held her tight. "Plenty of people knew we weren't living sustainably. It was always a problem for another day though."

The apartment was silent. The whole city was silent, really. Ruby had always been bothered by the hustle and bustle of the city but now that it was gone it only made her nervous. It only solidified that fact that things were terribly terribly wrong with the world.

The outlying villages were fine for the most part. As fine as they ever were which Ruby didn't think was very fine at all, but the 'catastrophe' was limited purely to the city of Vale. It was tempting to just leave and go back to how she was living. Or go find some small village somewhere and start a new life there. Maybe that isolated village in the mountains.

Blake picked up a book and starting flipping through it.

"So now what?" Weiss asked. "The guild is in shambles, the city is in ruins and it's everyone for themselves out there."

Ruby closed her eyes. "I would have said let's just get through today and tomorrow. But that's how we got into this mess in the first place, right?"

The others slowly nodded.

"So... I think we have to think bigger. Huge. Long-term. Like wiping out the Grimm completely or something. I dunno, I'm not good at this sort of thing."

Weiss put her hand on Ruby's shoulder. "You don't have to be."

Ruby looked over. Weiss smiled.

"You have us to help, after all."


End file.
